


No Haven Safer (Than the One They Tore Down)

by Catwithamauser



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Catholic School, Cheating, F/M, Fluff and Angst, High School, Mental Health Issues, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-12-06 01:47:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11590467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catwithamauser/pseuds/Catwithamauser
Summary: Frank Delfino bursts into the boring, predictable world of St. Anne’s midway through her sophomore year. She tries not to notice; Laurel feels like she’s constantly averting her eyes, pretending she doesn’t see and this is just one more thing she’ll swear she has no knowledge of. But she does, can’t help but notice him.Or...its a Flaurel HS AU





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Look, we all know i love some angst and we all i know i love some smut, so here we go, its a HS AU. It takes place immediately post-kidnapping and its like a nice 50/50 balance of Laurel feeling like she's losing her mind and y'know, filth.  
> But who can resist flaurel as baby nerds?
> 
> Its probably gonna be about 20 or so chapters, but don't be on the lookout for much plot to cut the smut and angst...

Frank Delfino bursts into the boring, predictable world of St. Anne’s midway through her sophomore year. She tries not to notice; Laurel feels like she’s constantly averting her eyes, pretending she doesn’t see and this is just one more thing she’ll swear she has no knowledge of. But she does, can’t help but notice him.

She doesn’t hear the real story until much later, but she’s told in hushed whispers by people who couldn’t possible know the truth, that he comes from up north; Queens, they say, Philly, Boston sometimes, kicked out of a series of schools, public, private, Catholic, reform, there until his parents sent him down to live with an uncle or someone, get a fresh start. No one seems to know why he was supposedly kicked out of these series of schools; some rumors say three, others have it as high as seven, but they all seem to agree on this being his last shot, the last chance he will be given to go straight.

Laurel says nothing, though she wants to scoff and roll her eyes and point out that none of the people who seem to know anything about Frank have any reason to. None of them are in any of his classes, or are ever seen with him, or work up in the admin office and so the real question ought to be how the hell they think they know anything at all.

But well, Laurel is not the kind of girl to point something like that out, never has been, so she just lets it go and smiles the thin polite smile that always makes her drive her nails, hard, into her palms, because she hates it so much and leaves them to their speculations.

Whatever the reason for him appearing on a dreary day in February, Frank Delfino bursts into the school like a wild animal; furious and snapping and terrified. That’s what catches Laurel’s attention, the wide eyed panic she can see buried under the desperate anger. It’s a look she recognizes, though she wishes she didn’t, and she feels her eyes sliding away from him, not out of politeness, but because it hurts to look too long at him, like looking at the sun.

The first two weeks he’s at St. Anne’s he growls at anyone who dares speak to him, approach him, sits slumped in seats with his legs kicked out and his arms crossed and a glower fixed to his face. And then, two weeks in, he simply stops.

He shows up to school one morning, not even a Monday, and suddenly he’s grinning, arms loose and relaxed and his grin is crooked and slanted and cocky. Its like a switch has been flipped inside him, like he’s suddenly a new person and he’s laughing and making jokes and flashing that quick smirk at the prettiest girls and the toughest teachers and suddenly instead of feared, gossiped about, Frank Delfino is accepted. It feels to Laurel like he’s accepted his fate, like he realized he could only fight so long and decided it was no longer worth it, but what does she know and anyway its something her step sister, studying psych at FSU, would probably tell her is projecting. And Laurel finds herself edging even further away from him, because she can still see the anger, the violence still buried beneath his grin and its something she fears almost as much as she’s drawn to it.

Its easy enough to avoid him; he’s a junior after all, and she’s a year younger and though occasionally their orbits cross, she can mostly slip away, slip into the background and edge away from him. There’s a certain level of curiosity about her, after all, her father’s extensive businesses, his government contacts gives her a certain prestige among the St. Anne’s students that his money alone never would, so she sees him at parties and football games and charity events, but Laurel is very good at being seen when required and unseen the rest of the time. And so its not until a year later, the beginning of her junior year, the summer after her world tilts on its axis, tips dangerously and shatters around her, after sixteen days that feel like an ending more than anything else, feel like a period in her life, harsh and final, rather than ellipses, than parentheses, certainly nothing like a comma, that she really has any interaction with Frank Delfino.

She’s at a party, supposed to be dancing, doing shots with her friends, eyeing the cute boys huddled around the keg, something like that, but instead Laurel’s tucked herself away under a tree in the far corner of the lawn, mostly hidden by the gathering darkness, letting the cooling night air wrap itself around her. She is drunk though, or well on her way there, a Solo cup full of vodka, cut with only a splash of Coke resting gently by her foot.

Except suddenly a body drops itself beside her on the bench, settling heavily beside her but careful not to touch her, huffing out a quick laugh while Laurel’s breath catches and panic surges through her bones.

“Hey,” the body says, voice low as Laurel swallows down any fear, takes it and buries it deep in her chest. It takes her a long, long moment to realize its Frank Delfino, the senior, the one with the quick, easy smile, the one who even the senior girls track with their eyes as he saunters through the halls, the only boy who wears his collard shirt, his tie with ease, with a familiarity like he was born wearing them, like the shirt isn't too stiff and starched and his tie isn't too tight against his neck.

It takes her long moments before Laurel realizes who has settled beside her, who has spoken, that he has leaned back against the cold stone of the bench, casual and expectant.

She must be drunker than she feels because she doesn’t find herself surprised at all to see him, to have him appear out of nothing beside her. She feels almost like she’s been waiting there for him, anticipating his arrival since he first arrived at St. Anne’s. She eyes her Solo cup accusingly, resolves not to touch it again until he’s gone.

“Hey,” she whispers back, hating how her voice trembles, shakes like she’s afraid of him, of the things he carries with him.

Laurel resists the urge to wrap her arms around herself, resists it for only a moment before it overwhelms her and she’s hugging her elbows, trying to tell herself its because she’s cold and not because of Frank, because she thinks she needs to protect herself from him. Not because she sometimes feels like she needs to protect herself from the entire world, too loud and harsh and scraping against her skin like sandpaper.

“Parties not really your thing?” he asks, fixing her with that crooked smile of his, wide and smirking.

“Not really,” she answers, eyes fixed on her feet, trying so, so hard not to let them stray to Frank’s legs, kicked out casually in front of him.

He laughs quickly. “I’ve seen you around a couple times,” he tells her. “At different parties. Figured I should come say hi.”

“Why aren't you inside?” she asks, scowling as she switches the direction of the conversation. She doesn’t want to be talking to Frank, to anyone, about why she’s hiding in the shadows. And that’s what she’s doing, she’s brave enough to admit that.

He shrugs and she can hear the spread of his smile even though she can’t see it. “Nah,” he scoffs. “I like it out here.”

“Why?”

He laughs again, knocks his shoulder into hers softly. Laurel tries not to flinch, she really does, but she thinks Frank sees her recoil anyway because she thinks he sounds apologetic when he speaks again, apologetic and a little sad. “I wanted to see if you were here.”

“Why?” she presses again, feels something harsh and angry start to crawl its way across her throat. She swallows that down too, chokes it back until her voice it neutral, even, until nothing shows in her face.

“Because you’re here,” he says as though that’s all the explanation needed, as though the answer should be obvious. “And everyone else is there.”

“And you should be there too,” she points out.

He nods, she can see him nod out of the corner of her eye. “I should. But I’m not,” he huffs out a quick laugh. “Where’s your boyfriend?’

Her brow furrows. “I don’t have a boyfriend,” she answers far, far too quickly.

“That boy then,” Frank shrugs. “The one who’s always following you around.”

“Kan,” she says automatically, trying not to frown too hard, trying not to grimace. Its not that she doesn’t like Kan, she likes him a lot, more than she’d ever have thought possible; he’s nice and easy and gentle and doesn’t push her too hard for more than she’s willing to give him, doesn’t demand answers of her for things she doesn’t have the words to speak of. “He went to get another drink,” she says, gesturing vaguely, limbs loose, towards the house. She really must be drunker than she thought, she thinks, feeling the weight of her arm as she moves, resolves not to shift around quite so much until her body is her own again, released from the grip of the warm rush of the alcohol soaking her through. “He’ll be hours.”

“Kan,” he repeats like he’s tasting the words on his tongue, like he’s not sure he likes the taste. “Well, Kan seems to think he’s your boyfriend.”

“He’s not,” Laurel snaps, more heat behind her words than she’d intended. She doesn’t love Kan, she’s certain of that, but she’s fond of him; likes the protection he provides to her, the shield having him around her provides. Kan can answer for things she can’t herself, lets her fade into the background with his loud laugh and his quick wit and because she can become ‘Kan and Laurel’ rather than just herself. She's wanted that protection before it happened, craved the shield of another body that stopped questions, demands from striking her. She’s always been quiet, always been more content to linger in the shadows, that hasn’t changed. Not because of that, that thing that was done to her. And because having Kan next to her provides a measure of insulation against conversations like this, with boys who’s smiles are too bright, too eager, who’s eyes linger just a second too long on her legs, her ass, her tits, who seem to think she is someone they want to know, know more about, especially when they’re drunk. 

Except Frank, she thinks, has done none of that so far, or at least she’s too jumbled with vodka to notice. She can’t feel his eyes roaming her body, can’t feel the heavy weight of expectation settling beside them like a third body squeezed beside them on the bench, doesn’t think he’s trying to prompt her to offer more of herself than she’s willing, is content to sit beside her and listen to the things she’s willing to say, the things she’s not as well.

Frank hums, and a smirking grin passes over his face. “I brought you a drink actually,” he tells her, reaching down beside his feet and offering her a Solo cup. “You looked like you needed one.”

“I’ve got one,” Laurel tells him shortly, holding up her half filled cup, taking a long sip so she can watch Frank from over the rim.

“Have a second,” he shrugs, grinning wryly. “It’s beer though. I dunno what you like yet.”

She can feel her lips pull into a smile against the lip of the cup. He has such ridiculous confidence, she thinks, such complete belief that someday, someday soon, he’s going to learn her preferences about silly meaningless things like what she likes to drink. She wants to roll her eyes, wants to resist him, tell him he’s wrong; that Kan barely knows her and they’ve been friends since middle school and she knows, knows he’s the one that knows her best, the one she’s let closest to her heart. But he’s so sure of it she almost doesn’t want to shatter the illusion. “Beer’s fine,” she says instead.

His grin goes wide, blinding as he hands her the cup. “I’m Frank by the way,” he tells her, smirking.

“Laurel,” she replies, even though she’s certain he knows.

“I know,” he answers, and Laurel nods minutely, her suspicion confirmed. “I see you around all the time. And then when I try to find you and say hey, you’re always gone.”

She doesn’t try to deny it. “You’ve found me now.”

He nods. “I have. Had to hunt around for you a bit. Walked in on a few awkward hookups.”

His smile is coaxing, prompting and Laurel finds herself responding, letting herself smile thinly in answer to his slanted grin.

“Anyone interesting?”

“Look at you,” Frank chuckles, eyebrows raised and his grin teasing. “I’d’ve pegged you as beneath all that.”

Laurel rolls her eyes, shrugs. “It’s useful information.”

He chuckles again, glances away slightly, his cheeks coloring pink. Laurel finds a laugh tickling somewhere deep in her chest, something warm and affectionate, wants to tease him about blushing because she thinks he’ll be even more embarrassed, will color even more. She likes seeing Frank sheepish, it softens him, makes him look young and soft and eager. “You’re nothing like what I thought,” he says thoughtfully.

“You don’t know anything about me,” she tells him stiffly, teeth clenched so she doesn’t get angry, furious really at the idea that he knows, can know, anything about her from the minuscule interactions they’ve had, from the idea that there is anything to know about her.

“I don’t,” he agrees. “But I want to. If you’ll let me.”

“Why’ve you been watching me?” she blurts, eyes widening when she realizes what she’s said, gaze fixing on her feet again, wishing the bench would swallow her up. She shouldn't say anything, Laurel resolves, should remain silent until Frank leaves because she is not in a position to say the things she should, stay silent when she should. She does not have the armor necessary to fend off even the half hearted attacks he’s sending over her walls; water balloons instead of bombs.

“Because I have to,” he tells her, so gentle she thinks he must know how it sounds. “Because I don’t think you’d tell me anything, even if I asked. Because the rest of the school can’t wait to tell everyone everything, and you, I’m not sure you’ve ever said anything you didn’t double and triple check first.”

“That’s not true,” she lies, unconvincingly, even to her own ears.

He laughs, chuckles low under his breath so that Laurel feels it more than hears it, a low rumble that sets something answering, something echoing in her already tingling fingers. “Fine. Tell me something true.”

Well, she walked into that one, Laurel thinks, hating herself, hating this fucking vodka, which tastes disgusting anyway, for getting herself into this goddamn situation, hating that she can barely think of some easy, simple thing to tell him which will lead him off her trail. “I was born in Mexico.”

“Cool,” he nods seriously and Laurel’s struck by how he doesn’t seem at all triumphant, victorious that he pulled information out of her, like it’s some kind of game, he seems like he thinks its genuinely interesting, like he really did want to know.

“Where?”

“Aren't we getting a little too personal?” she asks, an edge to her voice that maybe goes beyond joking and into something accusing, something angry. She hated questions before, she hates them even more now, hates the demand, hates the expectation, hates the ownership it claims over her. She’s always so fucking angry.

“If it helps, I was born in Philly,” he offers, his grin open, inviting.

She hums, corner of her mouth pulling tight. “Weird. Everyone seems to think you’re from Boston.”

Frank laughs again. Laurel thinks he’s always laughing, finds herself liking it more than she should. “Nah, don’t know how they figured that. Until I came down here, I’d never left Philly. Except to go to Jersey a couple times.”

“D’you miss it?” she asks him. “Philly?”

His grin falters, eyes suddenly sad, soft. “Yeah,” he exhales.

“I miss Monterrey,” she whispers, her eyes fixed on her hands, feeling like somehow she’s exposing herself, baring herself to

Frank in a way that’s terrifying, dizzying just by admitting the sorrow, the loss that still remains with her, that she buries beneath her heart and pretends she doesn’t feel. She shouldn’t, logically she knows that, but she misses what she had, misses what once was, who she once was.

They sit together in silence for long moments and Laurel feels, somehow, that though she’s alone in her thoughts, her grief, that there’s no way Frank can understand what she’s lost, he’s sharing, somehow, in the things she carries with her.

“Are you going to go back?” she asks finally, a shiver she tells herself is because of the soft breeze rippling over her skin. “To Philly?”

“Probably,” he says simply. “What about you?”

“I,” she begins, falters, swallowing down the things she wants to say, the feelings that threaten to drown her. She thinks maybe she’s shared far too much already with Frank, let him see too close to the fragile, bruised heart of her, to the things she can’t even acknowledge herself. “Maybe.”

“You should,” he tells her, softly and she thinks maybe he’s speaking more to himself than to her. “If you want to.”

“Maybe,” she says again.

“Were you born in Monterrey?” he asks then, grin returning, slanted and bright and Laurel finds herself thinking of how much she’d missed it when it was gone.

She nods, takes a long sip of her drink so she can swallow back the lump that’s appeared in her throat.

“What’s it like?”

“Hot,” she says, trying for a joke, but she hears it fall flat. “But not like here. Dry hot. Warm.”

“Hotter than here?” he asks.

“Dry hot,” she repeats.

“Why’d you move here?” he presses.

“My dad,” she says shortly, and there must be something in her voice that Frank picks up on because he gives her a smile that feels apologetic, feels like a retreat.

“Me too,” he tells her then, like a peace offering, like a confession.

Laurel just raises her eyebrows, her cup to her lips, watches him silently as she takes another sip, waits for him to respond. When he doesn’t, she finds herself pressing forward, wanting to know more, wanting to make that tentative, fragile connection with him again. “Want to talk about it?”

Frank sucks in a quick breath, turns and gives Laurel a look, long and knowing. “Do you?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“Me neither,” he tells her, his smile bitter but still slanting, crooked.

“Good thing we have booze then,” she quips, tentative but certain he will take the escape she’s offering.

He holds up his own cup in something like a toast, lips quirking as he scrubs his free hand over his face. “Cheers to that.”

They both take long sips, stare silently out at the thick darkness, the silence cut through by the distant thumping of the bass from the house, the shouts and laughter crackling across the lawn.

“You planning on going back in?”

“Probably not,” she tells him, not willing to admit she has no intention of going back inside before Kan comes back out to find her. And he won’t, not until the party begins to wind down, because he knows her too well, knows when she needs her solitude and her silence, even from him. And he’ll come out in an hour or two, sheepish and a little drunk and ask if she’s ready to go and Laurel won’t mind too much when he kisses her, sloppy and lips tasting of stale beer, because he’s easy and he’s comfortable and he lets her be what she needs to be, accepts the things that she is.

“Doesn’t anyone wonder where you go?” Frank asks, risking a glance back towards the house as though he fears someone coming after them.

She gives him a look, skeptical and derisive. “You were in there, you really think anyone’s paying attention?”

“Not even your friends?”

Laurel shrugs. “Kan’ll know where I am.”

“And you say he’s not your boyfriend,” Frank teases, though she thinks maybe there’s an edge to his voice.

“Kan’s something,” she admits reluctantly, feeling like she’s moving the goalposts from her earlier insistence about him, about the strange, complex thing they are. “But he’s not my boyfriend.”

Frank hums. “So do you want one?”

“What?”

“A boyfriend?” he asks, his crooked, smirking grin back. “D’you want one?”

“Why?” she throws out before she can fully think through her words. “You offering?”

His smile widens, confident, almost victorious and Laurel finds herself wanting to laugh along with him, a pull she can’t begin to guess at arcing between them like a live current. “Yeah,” he tells her. “I am.”

“I don’t know you at all,” she points out. “And you don’t know me either.”

“We could fix that you know,” Frank tells her, a little smug, a little hopeful.

“We could,” she agrees slowly, cautiously. “But I’m not sure that’d be a good idea.”

“Why not?” he asks. “Afraid you’ll like me?”

“That,” she admits with a little hitch to her shoulders, her words flowing out of her like water, across that invisible connection between the two of them. She is beginning to hate how quick she is with the truth when Frank is near, how quick she is to confess the things she’d like to keep shuttered inside herself. “Afraid I won’t and you will. Afraid I will and we’ll be awful together. Afraid we won’t.”

“We could try it and find out,” he suggests, smiling like he’s trying to coax something out of her, like he knows there’s something inside Laurel she’s not quite willing to acknowledge yet but that Frank can see, small and fragile and yearning to meet the sunlight.

“So tell me something else,” she prompts, echoing Frank’s own words. “Something true.”

“I’m allergic to pineapple,” he offers.

“That’s not really what I meant.” But her mouth twists anyway, into something she cant pretend isn't a smile.

“I know,” he nods. “I’m just getting warming up. I’m actually a decent student; my GPA’s 3.8. I hate football. The first time I caught a fish I cried, begged my dad to throw it back because I knew it was in pain. My uncle has a cat named Stanley who sleeps on my bed at night. For some reason I’m the only one he likes.”

“Should make Stanley your girlfriend,” Laurel suggest with a teasing smile, almost flirtatious. She downs the last of her vodka and Coke, resolves not to begin on the beer that Frank brought her, resolves to will herself into sobering up.

Frank chuckles low and deep in his throat. “Might have to. Stanley can at least pretend to like me.”

“I don’t dislike you,” she confesses. “I just don’t know you.”

“What else could you want to know?” he asks her. “My middle name is Giuseppe, honest to god. I don’t have a girlfriend, but I don’t mind if you’d want the job. I’ve read Catch-22 four times. I really really don’t like Star Wars.”

“What’s your favorite class?” she whispers into the night.

“English,” he replies without hesitation. “I hate physics.”

“I like history,” she offers. “And French.”

“Not Spanish?” Frank asks, again knocking his shoulder into hers, slower this time, gentle, like he knows she needs a warning before he touches her. She does, because the thrill that rushes through her leaves Laurel’s head spinning, her heart pounding until she’s gasping for breath. Its good though, good enough it terrifies her, good enough to leave her reeling.

“They wouldn't let me take it,” she explains, scowling against the plastic of her Solo cup. “Bastards.”

He laughs sharply. “Bastards,” he echoes, then. “So you’re trilingual?”

Now its her turn to laugh, leaning into Frank’s shoulder, warm and solid and comforting somehow. “Bi and a half lingual?” she offers. “If that’s a thing?”

“Say something for me.”

“In French?” she asks, because she’s pretty sure neither her tongue nor her brain are in a place where she can conjure up French. If she’s really being honest with herself, and she often is, she can feel herself getting to the place where she’ll be reduced to slurring, badly, in Spanish while Kan tries to decipher her words, her intentions while she drapes her body over his, tries to burrow her face in his neck, his chest. 

That’s another reason she likes Kan, Laurel thinks, fondly, because he takes care of her, or he tries and he doesn’t ask her questions when she gets too drunk because some other boy is trying to flirt, badly, with her and maybe get her drunk enough to hook up with him. He just accepts it, when she gets drunk or angry or silent, accepts when she cannot bear his touch, cannot bear him to be near her, accepts the bad with the good and lets himself love her anyway. She doesn’t deserve Kan, she thinks, doesn’t deserve the way he loves her, all of her and she certainly doesn’t deserve it when she’s hiding from him in the back corner of the yard, hiding with Frank and whatever he thinks he’s going to get out of her.

Except she doesn’t think that’s Frank’s intention at all, to get her drunk and sloppy and willing to let him fuck her. Aside from offering her a beer, offering to be her boyfriend, he hasn’t done a damn thing that would suggest he wants anything more than what she’s already given him, her presence, her time, maybe a few slivers of information she’s willing to throw him like he’s a dog begging for scraps.

“Nah,” he tells her with that smirk of his, eyes practically dancing with it. “Spanish.”

She tells him she’s not a trained monkey, in Spanish of course, but only because its easier right now when her head feels fuzzy and warm and really all she wants to do is curl herself further into Frank’s solid body.

“You told me to go fuck myself, didn’t you?” he asks, clearly pleased with her defiance.

“Something like that,” she murmurs, finds the beer he brought her and begins to sip at it, long and slow.

“That’s ok,” he tells her and smiles, like he’s pleased she feels strongly enough about him to go to the effort. “My fault for not knowing any.”

“You’re learning right?” she asks, curiosity and concern getting the better of her. It’s not Miami and its not a public school, but even St. Anne’s comes with certain expectations about having at least a working proficiency in Spanish. It’s south Florida after all and the Anglos who stubbornly stick to English are dealt with mercilessly sometimes. Even Kan, her wonderful, sweet Kan, gets a certain level of shit heaped on him for not being quite fluent, quite comfortable in Spanish, even though he can curse out the best of them in Begali and Hindi too for that matter.

He nods. “Yeah. Figured I should after even the teachers started speaking it in the halls.”

“Good choice,” she agrees.

“Why, you offering to help?” he asks her, and she can’t quite decide whether he’s teasing her or genuinely asking. Laurel’s not even sure it makes a difference in the end.

But because she’s a little drunk and a little defiant even at the best of times she goes ahead and takes a long swallow of her beer, turns and stares him down, turns and fully looks at him for the first time all night. “Sure,” she tells him, watching his eyes widen, shocked and pleased in equal measure, pupils shot through with the glazed sluggishness she knows is mirrored in her own eyes thanks to the beer. “But I’m gonna make you work.”

“Ok,” he agrees without hesitation. “I’m in. Anything you want me to do, I’ll do.”

“That’s pretty brave of you,” she points out.

He nods, takes a long swallow of his beer and Laurel watches as his throat bobs, watches the clench of his jaw as he swallows, sharp and smooth. “Not really,” he tells her. “I trust you. I think too many people’ve hurt you for you to try it out on anyone else. Plus,” he says, smirk sneaking back onto his face. “I think I just really really want you to boss me around.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Frank,” she tells him, like a warning, like shields slamming down between them.

“I know,” he says, sheepish, running a hand across his brow, through his hair. “I know. Sorry.”

“S’ok,” she tells him, feeling guilty, somehow, like she’s done something wrong by asking him to stop, that it’s her fault somehow they have wildly different ideas about what they may or may not be, what they may or may not be able to become. Laurel knows that he can feel it, the thing that crackles between them and she knows that Frank has embraced it fully, wholly, given himself into whatever he thinks it means. And Laurel, well, Laurel knows she’s going to resist it at every turn, make sure that it’s not something that will hurt her, betray her before she allows it any room to breathe. She wishes it didn’t make her so guilty though, like she’s stonewalling Frank, resisting the inevitable. “Just don’t do it again, ok.”

He nods, serious, his eyes fixed on hers. “Ok. Tell me more, tell me something that make you happy, that you love. Something no one knows.”

“Pomegranates.”

He gives her a look, because he can’t possibly understand what she’s saying, what she means but he wants, desperately, like craving, to know.

“I love pomegranates,” she explains. “How much work you have to put into eating them, how intentional you have to be about eating them. Methodical.”

His grin starts out slow, sliding onto his face in degrees the longer she talks, wry and pleased. “I like that,” he tells her, still grinning, his eyes still locked on hers like he’s drinking her in. “I like that a lot. Intentional.”

“And sailing,” she continues, wistfully, as she feels the cool breeze whip against her skin, brush through her hair.

“Sailing?”

She nods, finding herself blinking back tears she didn’t know were going to come, a sudden surge of sorrow threatening to choke her. She swallows it back, tells herself she’s had too much to drink, tells herself that’s why she’s feeling like she’s been scraped raw, why tears are pricking in her eyes. Laurel tells herself a lot of things she knows aren't true, and this is just another one of them.

“What do you like best about sailing?” he asks, voice so gentle, like silk, like cool flowing water, that she knows he can see the choking lump in her throat, the tears flickering against her lashes.

“When things go right, when the wind’s right and my tack is right and I’m right, it’s like I’m flying.”

Frank’s smile is blinding, perfect and Laurel knows, completely, totally, that he understands. She doesn’t know if he’s ever sailed before, doesn’t know if he even knows what she’s talking about, what ‘tack’ means, but she knows he understands, the feeling, the sense behind her words, she knows that, can see it in his eyes. “You like to sail alone, don’t you?”

She nods, teeth sinking into her lip, guilty, because she knows its not always safe and it limits how far she can go, where she can go, and sometimes it feels like she’s running away from all the things that chase her down to the shoreline, but well, she loves the solitude, the silence, the feeling when it’s just her and her boat and the wind and the waves. It’s the only time, now, Laurel feels like she’s herself again, the self that she maybe left for dead in an abandoned house in Monterrey.

He nods seriously, though his grin remains fixed. “I’ve never been sailing, but I took a ferry to Jersey a couple times. It was, it was something else.”

“You liked it?”

Frank nods again. “I did yeah,” he tells her. “First time I went, my ma and my little brothers, they all got sick but I just stood up on the deck and pressed my nose between the railings and just stared out at the water. It barely takes ten minutes to get across, but I was pretty much mesmerized. And the rowers. I always liked the rowers.”

She must look confused, must make it clear she’s not entirely following him, his line of thought, because Frank continues, nodding, his eyes distant. “I always thought rowing was a bit like flying, just gliding along the water. Sometimes I’d wake up early, way before school, and go running along the river so I could watch them.”

“You know you’re in a good place for boating,” Laurel tells him, placing her hands in her lap gently so that she can resist the urge to take his hand, tangle her fingers with his. “You should go sometime.”

“Everyone here seems to yacht,” he says with a twist to his lips that Laurel decides is one of distaste. “Or they own a yacht that never seems to go anywhere.”

“They do,” she grins, can’t help herself, because well, Frank’s summed it up pretty well. “Yachts cost more.”

He laughs quickly. “Is that what it is? Because I’ve been to like three yacht parties so far and I’ve never left the dock.”

She snorts, nearly chokes on her beer. “At least you’re hanging out with the right people. I don’t think I’ve been invited to more than three.”

He gives him that teasing, slanting grin and Laurel feels herself melting, feels herself grinning in response. “That’s cause you hide out. Nowhere to hide out on a yacht.”

She rolls her eyes to keep from smiling. “Plenty of places to hide on a yacht. How do you think people hook up at yacht parties?”

“So you admit you’ve been hiding out?” he grins like victory, triumphant, licks his lips as he does and Laurel finds herself staring, transfixed as he does, unable to look away, wanting, sudden and jarring, to press her lips against his.

“Not always,” she murmurs, her eyes swinging away from Frank, knowing her cheeks color, hoping he doesn’t see. “You haven't seen me party yet.”

“I have,” he corrects, voice low and rough and he scrubs a hand across his face; when she sees his mouth again he’s smirking, but his eyes are cautious, guarded. “You’re uh, you’re a good dancer.”

Laurel doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to respond to that because she only dances when she’s sure no one’s paying attention, when she’s sure everyone is too drunk to notice her, arms wild and hair loose and all her walls crumbling under the onslaught of the pounding beat, of the alcohol singing in her veins. 

She wants the ground to swallow her up, wants to go back in time and tell herself not to let herself relax at whatever party Frank saw her, wants to tell her past self to look up, notice Frank, approach him then, notice him all the times she knows he was noticing her. She wants to know that Frank was watching her, wants to revel in his gaze because it doesn’t hurt, because it doesn’t feel like he wants to know more than she’s willing to give, rip down her walls and crack open her chest and see inside. His eyes feel only like he’s willing to take what she offers, soak up what little she cracks open and lets him see.

“I’m sorry,” he says quickly when she’s silent far too long, and it feels like the thousandth time he’s apologized to her since they began speaking and all Laurel wants is for him to stop. Everyone’s always apologizing, like they think she’s glass, like every little thing they say will fracture her. Laurel’s far too smart and far too observant and has lived for far too long in her father’s house not to have built up walls as thick as bank vaults, not to have shielded herself from all the things, verbal and otherwise, that could hurt her with armor she sometimes suspects is so thick not even light can sneak through and find her.

Even so, she thinks, with more anger than she really ought, its insulting when people think they’ve hurt her just by speaking, like they think they have some power over her, some ability to wound her that fifteen years with her family hasn’t made her nearly immune to, wounded her worse than those sixteen days she refuses to think about, refuses to acknowledge.

“Don’t be,”she instructs him, voice colder than she intended. Because Frank doesn’t know, she tells herself, doesn’t have any idea just who he’s dealing with; the things that she is, the things that she’s had to become. He thinks he’s just dealing with a small, pretty girl, but he’s wrong, Laurel thinks viciously, suddenly both hating and pitying Frank. She’s not some little girl at all, she’s a monster with a pretty face just like her father. And he can’t know that, no one else can know that. So she has to allow him his forgiveness, because he doesn’t know a thing. He’s the one that’s breakable, she thinks, all the anger trailing from her fingers as she forces it away from her, he’s the one that will get hurt. “I don’t mind.”

“Then I’m not sorry,” he says, his grin cocky, smirking again. She wants to love it, love his smirking confidence again but she can’t find it in herself to really feel anything. She takes another long sip of her beer, wishes it was something stronger, because it’s finally gotten her where she needs to be, to that perfect place of numbness where nothing hurts anymore, where she can’t even really remember what she has to hurt about. Except she never forgets, not for a single second, isn’t sure she ever will, isn’t even sure she wants to. “You dance like you’re flying too.”

“How do you dance, Frank?” she asks, tries to force her voice into something light, something teasing, because she’s done with talking, done with having confessions pulled out of her like pulling a thread until she unravels. She just wants to go home. She’s wanted to go home for going on six months now, ever since one warm day in June, isn’t sure there’s a home to go to anymore, not now, not after.

“Badly,” he says instantly, grin growing wide, slanted.

Laurel barks out her laughter, sharp and quick, before she can help it and she thinks its that sound that brings Kan approaching, alerted to Laurel hiding from the thinning crowd inside the house.

“Laurel?” he calls out as he nears, because he’s Kan and even drunk he knows not to sneak up on her. And even drunk she recognizes his voice, deeper now than when she met him at twelve, but still has the same rich, sweet quality as it did when they were children. Kan is honey, she finds herself thinking and Frank is smoke.

“Kan,” she breathes back, like a sigh. Just hearing his voice eases some of the tension from her shoulders, lets some of the hard kernel of doubt, of fear, of anger to melt from her.

“You alright?” he asks her as he comes closer, comes into view, something nearing concern in his voice. He’s scowling when she’s close enough to notice him, eyeing Frank darkly. She hates it when Kan scowls, he does it so rarely that when he does she knows things are bad, she knows he’s upset.

“Yeah,” she says and smiles, holds out her hand to him because she was lying when she told herself she didn’t love Kan, she does, because he’s hers and he will let her wrap her body around his in an hour or two, let her rest her head against his chest and wrap her legs around his and won’t push her for more than that, even though she’ll be able to feel his dick, hard and urgent against her thigh. He’ll wait until the morning, or sometime Sunday when they’re trying to study for Trig, won’t push until she wants it too.

Kan takes her hand, squeezes slightly as gives Frank a slow, assessing look, not quite suspicious, but more like he’s just a little confused as to why he’s there. The two of them do one of those strange, silent nods she’s always seeing boys give each other, like they’re sizing each other up and she rolls her eyes, just manages to keep herself from snorting.

He hands her a bottle of water with his free hand and Laurel flashes him a look full of gratitude, doesn’t even mind the icy condensation against her fingers, gulps half of it down in one go. 

She lets him tug her to her feet, but sags her body into his, presses her head against his chest, stays like that until she feels Kan sigh, wrap his arms around her.

“Hi Kan,” she mumbles against the solid expanse of his chest, lets her eyes slip closed, lets some of the tension leave her body. When she’s with Kan she can let herself relax, let down her guard because she knows, knows, he will protect her.

“Hey Laurel,” he responds. “You drunk?”

She nods against his ribs, yawns before she can help herself, her head rubbing against his chest like she’s a cat. She wants to be swallowed up by Kan, to stop existing completely, to let him shield her from the things she doesn’t want to feel anymore.

“Party’s winding down,” he announces softly, fingers walking up her spine in the way he knows she likes, slow as he presses against the spaces between her bones. “You about ready to bounce?”

She yawns again before she nods, glances over at Frank, the way he’s studiously averting his eyes from them, scowling darkly at something by his shoe. “You need a ride Frank?” she asks impulsively. “We’re headed into town I think.”

His eyes swing between her and Kan and back again, scowl still carved onto the lines of his face. “I’ll pass.”

“We’ve got a DD,” she clarifies. “Nomar lost spoons last week, so he’s sober. Promise.”

“No,” he says again, firmly, an edge now in his voice. “I’ll pass. Thanks.”

Laurel shrugs, rolls her eyes a little before she rethinks her decision to be moving quite so much. “Suit yourself.”

She steps back slowly, out of Kan’s arms, barely able to keep her eyes open suddenly, wanting nothing more than to stay cushioned against his body, lovely and warm and comforting.

“See ya Frank,” Kan says as he swings his arm over Laurel’s shoulder, lets her body sag against his, practically keeping her upright. He presses a kiss against her temple, against the juncture of her neck and shoulder until Laurel sighs quietly, contentedly. “C’mon Laurel.”

She’s somewhat unsteady on her feet as they trek across the grass towards the house, but Kan is strong and solid and he supports her as she pitches in her heels. But while her brain is slow and jumbled and she can’t quite make the connections she needs to understand what was brewing between herself and Frank, she doesn’t miss the little strangled noise, of anger, or frustration, of something that’s ripped from his throat as they go, the look of dejection, of anger that flashes across Frank’s face as he sinks, heavy again, onto the stone bench, head bowing in something she thinks approaches defeat.

“I didn’t know you knew Frank,” Kan comments in a voice that, even drunk, Laurel can recognize as too casual, too easy. She stiffens, though she tries to pretend she doesn’t, leans just a little less against his body.

“I don’t,” she tells him just a little too quickly, wondering why she feels the need to justify herself to these two men. She doesn’t owe either of them anything, Kan or Frank, she doesn’t owe them explanations or justifications or even the barest slivers of information. She owes nothing to Kan, who she’s known for years, who is hers in a strange, twisted, complicated way, but she finds herself feeling guilty anyway, like she’s hiding something from him.

Kan makes a noise that Laurel almost decides is a scoff, pulls her body a little closer to his. “What’d he want?”

She shrugs as best she can. “I think he just wanted to get away from everyone inside.”

“Like you,” Kan says pointedly.

“Yeah,” Laurel agrees, though she knows there’s an edge to her words that she can’t contain, can’t tamp down. She can’t decide what he’s trying to imply, but she knows she doesn’t like his tone. He’s never cared about her tendency to sneak off, to need to be alone, to escape the noise, the crowds, the chaos of the parties, and she doesn’t like that he’s suddenly less supportive when Frank enters her orbit. “Like me.”

“What’d you talk about?”

“Kan,” she whines softly, slipping her hand into his.

“I’m curious,” he tells her, that same too casual tone back in his voice. “Frank’s got a bit of a reputation for not talking.”

Laurel tries not to bristle, instinctively, at Kan’s words. Neither of them know a damn thing about Frank, know the things that float around in his brain. Kan allows Laurel her quirks, her need for space and silence because he knows her, only because he knows her, her thoughts and her needs and he doesn’t extend the same courtesy to Frank because he doesn’t know him. It makes her sad, immeasurably so, that the only reason Kan has sympathy for her is because he knows her, already, can understand the things she needs. “He seemed nice enough.”

Kan chuckles lightly. “Because he wanted to get in your pants, Laur.”

She rolls her eyes, scoffs a little, even as she wonders whether that’s true, can't help but feel a tiny thrill at the thought that it was Frank’s aim, a little twist in her stomach that makes her a little sick. “If that was what he wanted, he coulda just stayed inside, waited till things got sloppy.”

He laughs again, light, reassured somehow by her words and helps her up the low steps onto the deck and into the house. “You know Lourdes and Nick Vega are hooking up again?” he asks, low in her ear.

She nods, grimacing as they enter the house and Laurel’s practically assaulted by shouts, by the thrumming stereo, by the scent of sweat and perfume and stale beer, the air hanging heavy and close around her, stifling, strangling. She wants to turn back around, retreat into the yard, but just schools her face into an impassive mask, braces herself as they move through the thinning crowd. She’s faced worse things, stared down monsters and returned alive, she can walk out the front door like nothing is wrong. “Thought so. She’s been way too casual recently. Barely mentioned him at all in Chem.”

“Really?” he asks, laughter in his voice as he gives a little shove to a body that falls into him, stumbling and loose. “And that makes you think they’re hooking up again?”

Laurel nods. “Yeah, totally. She’s spent all summer bitching about Nick. Went silent the second day in. Figured it was cause they were hooking up again.”

“And you didn’t think to say anything?” Kan asks incredulously.

She breathes a long, ragged sigh of relief as they finally make it out the front door, step down onto the driveway, air cool and crisp again. “I wasn’t sure.”

They pause, Laurel doesn’t know how or why, but then Kan is pressing his lips against hers, soft and insistent, feels her mouth part for his, instinctively, allowing herself to surrender to the familiar feeling of his body pressed against hers, of his hand at the small of her back. Her stomach flips a little, a slow bloom of pleasure that twists in her chest.

There’s a number of hoots, catcalls from a couple of the smokers huddled against the garage and Laurel’s eyes crack open to watch Kan good naturedly flick them off, feels his grin against her lips. That's why she loves Kan, Laurel thinks suddenly, that’s why she needs him, far more than he needs her. Because where her instinct would be to get angry, to snap at the hecklers, Kan just grins and takes it and gives it back just as well. She loves him because he softens her, he allows her to be soft when it sometimes feels like she must spend her whole life on guard, being hard and angry and suspicious. He lets her forget that she needs to be watchful and she is so, so grateful for that, loves him so throughly because of it.

“Where’s Nomar?” she slurs against his lips, kisses him again, just because.

“Promised me he was coming,” Kan tells her. “I think he wanted to grab some pizza.”

“There was pizza?”

Kan snorts. “I told him to bring a whole one for us, don’t worry. Road pizza. I know how snacky you get.”

She kisses along the line of his jaw. “You’re the best Kan.”

“You’re gonna have to share with Kim and Aisha.”

“No,” she grumbles as her body sags into his. “I’m not sharing.”

He strokes his hands through her hair, fingers carding through the strands until Laurel groans in relief, in pleasure, Kan ignoring her complaints. “You coming back with me?”

She nods minutely, head tucked against his neck, breathing in his familiar scent, tinged with the pungent stink of beer and pot. “I can’t go back there right now.”

Kan lets that comment go as well, knows when to say silent where her family is concerned. His lips twist though, in distaste.

He knows enough, not much, not anywhere near the truth, but he knows enough to know Laurel’s family is no good, not just for her but in general, knows enough that he very quickly enlisted his mom to step into the role for Laurel too, turned his family into Laurel’s because even at twelve he recognized how desperately she was craving one, how completely she wished to escape. 

“You alone this weekend?” he asks, though Laurel can tell from the rasp of his voice that he knows the answer will be a negative.

She just shakes her head, not risking more of an answer. He strokes his hands along her back, back and forth up her spine, easing the knots, the tension from her body. He always knows how to touch her, her body as familiar to him as his own after so many years.

“Call them tomorrow,” he instructs her, giving her the permission she needs to escape her family for the weekend. “Tell them we have a big project for history. Or don’t call, I’ll give them the excuse if anyone decides to check up on you.”

“They won’t call,” Laurel tells him shortly. “You know they won’t.”

“They might,” Kan offers, always living in hope, always convinced things will get better because he doesn’t know otherwise.

His family is perfect and loving and he cannot conceive of the things her father is, her family is. Kan cannot understand the choice her father made, the choices Laurel makes everyday that make rage burn against her heart, rage and loathing and shame. He cannot understand why every word she speaks to her father feels like a betrayal, why every moment spent in her father’s house feels like she too is walking away from the Laurel that’s still huddled, terrified and red eyed in that abandoned basement, subject to the whims of men with only greed and pain in their hearts, who’s life wasn’t worth even a fraction of the cost of her father’s house, abandoning her to her fate, to her death, because money was more important than that Laurel’s life. Every moment spent in her father’s house, every single penny of his money she spends feels like a betrayal of the girl she was even as it feels like she’s exacting her own revenge, her own ransom on her father, spending the money he refused to pay for her life, bleeding him of the ten million he felt was too high a price for his youngest child. No, Kan could never understand why the very idea of going home, as if that place is home anymore, makes her skin crawl, makes nausea claw across her chest.

“Kan,” she growls and he lets it go, fingers resuming their walk up her spine, his lips moving to the sensitive spot behind her ear, lips pressing against her skin and his teeth scraping there. Her frustrated growl quickly turns breathy, wanting. “Kan.”

“Knock it off,” a voice sounds from behind Laurel and she startles. Kan jumps, stiffens a little but doesn’t step back, keeps

Laurel tucked into his arms and she’s filled with a gratitude so intense and unexpected it sends tears to her eyes. He protects her, always, even from things he doesn’t need to, is so familiar with her, her body and her reactions and her needs, that he knows enough not to step back when she’s drunk and somber and startled.

“Fuck off,” Kan says good naturedly as Laurel recognizes Nomar’s voice behind her, hears the jangle of keys in his hand.

“You bring pizza?” she shoots over her shoulder, turning in Kan’s arms to glance at Nomar and Kim and Aisha, approaching now with slices of pizza piled high on a paper plate.

“Yeah,” Aisha says, holding up the plate, grin wide. “We grabbed some Supreme for you, don’t worry.”

“Awesome,” she says, grabbing two and handing one to Kan, taking a large bite of her own slice, half of it gone before Kan’s even dropped his hands from her body. She loves Kan, Laurel thinks, and she loves her friends who bring her pizza and drive her home when she’s drunk and sleepy and morose but still has too much dignity to call her father’s driver, voice small and pleading, and beg Amir to come pick her up and not to say anything to her dad.

“You feeling ok, Laur?” Aisha asks, giving her a pointed little look. So, Laurel thinks, her absence was noted by someone other than Kan, well, someone other than Kan and Frank.

She nods around her pizza, glances away.

Kan pipes up, as Laurel knew he would, voice edged enough that she sees Aisha shut her mouth, think better of saying anything more. “Just needed a little breather.”

Kan ushers her to the car, parked close down the block, bundles her in beside him, in the middle seat because Kim is taller and the shortest person gets the middle seat and Laurel is always shortest. She sags with relief against Kan, twines her fingers with his, shuts her eyes because she can let down her guard again, here in this car with Kan and her friends and the cool night air blowing in through the open window and the radio playing softly some song she almost recognizes.

She feels Kan pluck the half eaten slice of pizza from her hands and Laurel makes a little noise of annoyance, tries to resist his grasp, tries to keep her pizza because she’s hungry and sleepy and doesn’t want to have to choose, she shouldn't have to choose. She’s been given so many choices, impossible ones, that for once she doesn’t want to have to decide.

“I’ll give it back,” he tells her, a laugh in his voice, pressing a kiss against her temple. “Promise.”

She cracks her eyes, wants to warn him not to eat her pizza or he’s not getting laid until probably Sunday night when she needs to take her mind off her French test on Monday morning, but she loses the words somewhere between her brain and her mouth and just winds up sighing against his shoulder, lets the voices of her friends wrap around her, wash over her.

Except then she sees Frank, or thinks she sees Frank, walking along the sidewalk, hands shoved deep in his pockets and his head down and Laurel finds herself suddenly awake, suddenly sober, eyes fixed on his sleeves, rolled up now to expose his thick forearms, his collar open and gaping.

She wants to tell Nomar to stop the car, offer Frank a ride again, or to let her out so she can walk with him, wherever he’s going, give him the company he gave her, that she didn’t even realize she wanted. But she doesn’t, she just lets the car pass by, lets her eyes close again, lets Kan wrap an arm around her shoulders, pull her closer to him, his thumb brushing against the skin just above her elbow, soft and soothing.

She can’t worry about Frank, she decides as she lets sleep take her, wash over her like gently lapping waves, can’t let herself be concerned about Frank, about anyone but herself. Whatever he hoped to get out of her, whatever he hoped to see in her, whether he saw it or not, she can’t concern herself with him, with fulfilling his expectations, his hopes. She can barely keep herself afloat without piling Frank’s baggage in with her own. She has only enough energy to place a kiss against Kan’s shoulder, murmur a thanks against his skin and allow the lethal combination of alcohol and exhaustion to take her under, all of her worries left behind, finally, finally. Still, the last thing that flits through her mind as sleep takes her is the slant of his grin, the low, teasing rumble of his laugh and Laurel can feel her lips quirk before everything becomes nothing.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Becuase Erin said i had to  
> Lemme know what y'all think of this one (fic and/or chap)

She sees him in school, she can’t not, but Frank doesn’t approach her, doesn’t speak to her, barely even acknowledges they’d done more than exchanges names, bare pleasantries in the dark outside Chase Benner’s house.

It makes Laurel angry in a way she’s not sure she understands, that he’d been so insistent on seeking her out, speaking with her, and then he goes back to the silence, the distance that had previously characterized their relationship, or lack of one. It makes Laurel feel like she’s failed somehow, miserably failed some test she wasn’t even aware she was taking or to live up to some standard Frank had invented for her in his own mind. It makes her feel like she’s not good enough and Laurel is always, always feeling like she’s not good enough. Not good enough for her father, her distant step-mother, her perfect, casually brilliant brother, her beautiful, dedicated step sister. She hates it and resents it and if she didn’t half suspect it was exactly what Frank wanted, she’d’ve probably confronted him about it.

Instead, she goes back to pretending she doesn’t know, doesn’t notice Frank, tries to ignore the little wiggle of discomfort in her gut every time she thinks about him, about that strange night, about what she herself thought it had all meant.

But she does notice Frank, notices they way he tries to studiously ignore her, catches him watching her with lowered eyes, gaze blue and burning, scowl fixed to his face. He watches her when he thinks she’s not looking, but Laurel does, meets his eyes until he glances away, angry or embarrassed or nothing at all.

He doesn’t approach her about Spanish tutoring, doesn’t approach her about sailing or getting to know her or anything. Aside from occasionally watching her, Laurel doesn’t think anything has changed at all. He stays in his orbit, with his senior friends, the boys who laugh just a little too loud and the girls who linger just a little too long in the halls after the bell rings, and she stays in hers.

And then four, five weeks later, at another party, not the first one by far, not even the first one they’d both been at, Laurel’s world collides with Frank again.

It’s a beach party, held tucked away in a little cove everyone knows about but the cops generally pretend they don’t. They’ve got a bonfire going and a couple kegs and things are light, easy, nothing too raucous yet, though Laurel knows it won’t stay that way for long. Kan is off playing soccer down the beach, shirt off, and Laurel’s had enough to drink that every glance at him makes her mouth go dry, makes her press her legs together and glance away from him like she’s been burned.

She gets up, ignores the sweet ache between her legs and goes to refill her cup, chasing the perfect feeling of disconnection, of distance that alcohol can provide her, the sweet churn of desire. She finds the keg, holds out her cup to the boy manning the pump, startles as a little thrill of something, somewhere between shock and shudder, passes through her fingers, through her body as the boy reaches out and takes her cup.

Laurel looks up sharply, startles again as she meets Frank’s dark eyes, widening in shock before he pushes that down, grins his crooked grin at her, surprised and pleased.

“Hey,” he purrs, voice low and silken.

“Hey,” she whispers back, teeth sinking into her lower lip, hands twisting by her sides.

“Having fun?” he asks her as he fills her cup, pours out some of the foam.

She nods, teeth driving into her lip even harder because she will not smile, will not give him that satisfaction. She tries to focus on the feeling of sand around her toes, around her ankles, the sound of the waves and the crowd around them, anything but Frank’s grin, his dancing eyes. She winds up having to focus on the sting of pain in her mouth, the fear that if she doesn’t focus her mind on something other than Frank she’ll be tasting fresh blood before she can blink again.

“Cool,” he tells her, hands Laurel back her cup. “Let me know when you’re planning on vanishing again. I’ll come too.”

There’s another little jolt of feeling in her fingers as the cup returns to her hand, like a weight pressing her closer to him, drawing her towards Frank, the danger he poses. She wants to step back, but feels instead like her feet are rooted to the spot, rooted to wherever Frank is.

“I’m not,” she tells him suddenly, impulsively. 

“Not what?” he asks, smirking, like he knows already what she’s going to say.

“Running away tonight,” she explains, voice barely above a whisper so he has to lean forward to hear her. “I’m not gonna sneak off.”

“Nah?”

Laurel shakes her head, sips at her beer. “No. Not tonight.”

He nods seriously, ignores the boy who’s come up next to Laurel, holding out his plastic cup expectantly. “Well, you’re welcome to hang with me anyway,” he tells her, smirks, before giving the waiting boy a look that approaches a glare, hands him the keg nozzle with an eye roll.

“Ok,” she answers before she can help herself, before she can think through all the reasons why it’s a terrible idea to have anything to do with Frank, a terrible idea to allow herself to give in to to the thing that burns, white hot and terrifying between them. She thinks whatever there is, growing like a weed, like an inferno between them, it’s a dangerous thing, a destructive thing, burning hot and quick and raging like a wildfire, consuming everything in its path, leaving nothing living in its wake. Laurel has always been attracted to danger, to the lion’s mouth, the flickering flame, never been able to make herself step back from the ledge when there was still a few inches of space between her and the fall, the plunge back to earth.

“Yeah, ok.”

“Yeah?” he asks, mouth twisting and eyes sparking.

She nods again, thinks that she and Frank communicate mostly in silence, in things unsaid. “Yeah.”

He says nothing, just grabs his own plastic cup, takes a long swallow while Laurel watches, transfixed, at the bob of his throat, smirking against the lip. He lowers the cup, still grinning, reaches out and takes her hand in his, the spark once again tugging at a place deep in her chest, stealing her breath, setting her heart pounding as he threads his fingers through hers.

He does it naturally, without hesitation, just takes her hand like it belongs in his, like their hands, the flesh itself belongs intertwined, like he’s been doing it for years. Even Kan, Kan who knows her better than anyone, who learned her body along with Laurel herself, still hesitates sometimes before taking her hand, before wrapping her in his arms. Because sometimes Laurel flinches when Kan goes to touch her, shrugs out of his touch because it feels like sandpaper against her skin, angry and rough.

But well, Frank, he doesn’t hesitate, just grasps her hand in his larger one and instead of wanting to pull away, instead of flinching back, Laurel finds herself accepting his touch, easing her body into it, letting her body move in response to the tug of his hand, follow him wherever he’s leading, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. She half thinks maybe it is, that maybe it means nothing and everything at the same time.

They don’t go far, he just tugs her a few yards down towards the water, dropping down to the sand so that he tugs Laurel down with him. She lands in a heap against the still warm sand, glad she opted to wear shorts under her sundress, feel the grains skid against the back of her thighs. Frank keeps his hand tangled with hers, his thumb brushing against the back of her knuckles, feather-light, until Laurel pulls away, suddenly embarrassed, suddenly guilty at how much she likes it.

She glances back towards the crowd around the bonfire, towards where she can still see the shadow of a body that looks like Kan chasing after the soccer ball down the beach, flips her hair over her shoulders to fall, soft and dark like a curtain across her face, shielding her.

“I was thinking about you,” he tells her, voice rough, meeting Laurel’s eyes before glancing down to where his hand rests, alone, empty, against the sand.

She looks away, embarrassed still, makes a mumbled noise of questioning, fingers trailing through the sand, letting the grains run through her fingers.

“Wondering if you’d be here,” he continues, giving her a look that’s too heavy, too serious all at once and Laurel’s breath catches against her chest. “I wasn’t sure beach parties would be your thing.”

“You coulda said something at the last one,” she points out, an edge to her voice.

“I coulda,” he agrees. “But I don’t think your boyfriend likes me too much.”

She begins to tell him that Kan’s not her boyfriend, stops herself from rehashing that same argument for what feels, already, like the hundredth time. “Who cares,” she says instead. “Talk to me anyway.”

“I am,” he nods firmly, seriously. “I went sailing the other day. Saved up a bit and took a lesson down at the marina.”

“And?”

Frank’s grin spreads wide, splitting his face until his eyes crinkle and soften, perfectly, Laurel thinks. “It was everything I thought it’d be,” he nods, voice soft and staring out to the waves like he’s talking more to himself than to her, like he wishes he were out on the waves. “Just like you said. Like I really was flying.”

“I’m glad,” she tells him and she is, really, really is. He has a distant smile on his face like he’s still there, still out on the water, the wind and the waves and the sun on his face, in his hair, the rigging tugging through his hands. 

He nods, gives her a sidelong glance. “Yeah, me too. One good thing about living in Florida.”

Laurel laughs quickly, rolls her eyes. “It’s one of the few, that’s for sure.”

“You too,” he tells her, knocks his shoulder against hers in what she’s rapidly starting to realize is a purely Frank gesture of affection. “You’re the best thing about living in Florida.”

“I’ve got nothing to do with Florida.”

“You’d be the best thing about anywhere,” he says frankly, as though the answer is obvious. It sends another little shiver of surprise darting through her, tilting and disorienting.

Laurel says nothing, because there’s nothing to say, because it’s becoming rapidly clear to her that nothing she says to him is going to convince Frank that he doesn’t know the first thing about her, that he’s assuming far too much about her, about what they might be someday, who and what she is.

“You think I’m kidding,” he says, grin going slanted.

“I don’t know what to think,” she admits.

“Well, I’m not,” Frank insists, his eyes intent, piercing. “Kidding. Everything I know about you so far, even the stuff I don’t like, it’s interesting at least.”

“I,” she starts, falters. “You don’t talk to girls much do you?”

He smiles, slanted and crooked and so, so dangerous and leans towards her, eyes hypnotic now, the blue of them drawing her in, drawing her to him, inexorably. “That’s never really been my style,” he tells her. “Talking.”

She rolls her eyes, snorts out her laughter. “Does that line actually work on anyone?”

Frank looks shocked for a half a moment, blinks rapidly at her, all the confidence slipping from his face. “It does, yeah,” he tells her after a moment before his mouth twists. “Usually.”

“What kinda girls are you normally talking to?” she asks with a sharp bark of laughter.

“None of the girls I talk to are anything like you,” he breathes, like he’s still a little shocked, still a little in awe of her, still blinking like his brain is still catching up to her words.

“There are no girls like me.”

“That’s,” he starts, falters like he’s not sure what to say, his smile suddenly small and soft like he’s almost forgotten how to smirk, like she’s robbed him of his speech, his unflappable confidence. Laurel feels a little thrill, a little burst of confidence, of power that she can strip Frank of his unshakeable calm, his smirking self-assurance. She wants more of this shocked, startled Frank, this Frank who looks at her like he’s drastically underestimated who she is, the fearsome thing she can become.

“Yeah,” he agrees finally, laughing weakly, a little choked. “I think you might be right.”

“Good,” she tells him, nods firmly. “You should be worried by me.”

“I am,” he tells her sincerely, softly, eyes fixed again on her face, the deep blue of his gaze boring into hers, holding her eyes until Laurel knows there’s no hope of looking away, of breaking the spell he’s woven around her. “You’re going to ruin me, Laurel. I’m going to let you.”

She grin, feral, till she knows her eyeteeth show, sharp and dangerous, like an animal hunting her prey. “Good.”

Still holding her eyes he leans forward till she can see the lighter flecks in his irises, the little gold highlights, till she can feel his breath fanning against her cheek, warm and sweet. Laurel doesn’t know what’s going to happen, but she knows the tension must break before it sparks and consumes them both. She knows that one of them needs to choose either to advance or retreat, break the stalemate that’s kept them perched, teetering and unbalanced over some chasm she isn't sure spells her doom. 

But then someone hooks their phone up to a speaker and there’s music blasting through the warm air and the spell is broken.

Frank blinks and Laurel is free, suddenly, left taking slow, deep breaths to calm the racing of her heart, blinking rapidly to shake off the lingering confusion.

“Dance with me,” he tells her, voice a smooth purr.

“What?” she blinks again, lost at the direction things have taken, the sudden shift in the atmosphere.

“Dance with me,” he tells her again, urgent, urging. “You dance like you’re flying. I wanna see it, I wanna see you.”

He pushes himself up, off the sand, wipes his palms against his knees, extends a hand out to her.

She stares at him, stares at his outstretched hand for long, long moments before reaching out, letting Frank wrap his fingers around hers once again.

Laurel finds herself being tugged to her feet, laughing, as Frank tugs her back towards the bonfire, towards the little crowd of people who’ve also decided the pounding bass line requires a response, Frank letting his fingers rest against her hipbones, the pads of his fingers sending shooting, arcing shivers through her body, his hips sliding against hers in time with the bass.

Laurel grins at him, gives herself over the to feeling of his hands against her body, the feeling like comfort it conjures up in her chest, rolls her eyes and lets the music pulse through her, take control of her limbs. Frank was right, she thinks, she dances a little like she’s flying, free and untethered and eyes closed, head thrown back. There’s a sudden crush of people around her as the rest of the crowd begins dancing as well, hips and elbows knocking against Laurel’s body, sweaty and pressing close and heavy, but she doesn’t mind, not like she usually would. 

She feels a little like she does on the water, carried along by a current far stronger, far more powerful than she can conceive, just letting herself be moved by the ebb and flow of the bodies around her, by the rise and fall of the pounding bass line, by the wild movements of Frank’s hips against hers, the press of his chest against hers.

She dances for what feels like hours, until sweat is pouring from her body, soaking through her thin tank top, pooling at the small of her back, mixing with the sweat of all the bodies around her, until her breath comes short and panting, limbs heavy.

There’s sweat glistening on Frank’s brow, his dark hair soaked through, slippery and plastered to his head, his shirt clinging to the planes of his muscles and Laurel runs her hands across his back, over his shoulders before she can reconsider, tell herself why doing so is such, such a bad idea.

She’s not even thinking about Kan, though she knows she should be, not thinking about why it’s a bad idea to be dancing with Frank in front of half the school, how she’s going to start exactly the kind of gossip she’s tried so hard to avoid.

But well, his hips are gliding just right against hers and his smile is crooked and warm and the alcohol is running high through her blood and the night is warm and perfect and she can’t let herself care, not yet.

But then his hands slide down to cup her ass and draw her even closer to him and his lips skitter against her neck, stubble scraping against her skin and for a long, long moment Laurel lets herself ease into his touch, arches her neck to give his lips more access, more access to the sparks of something like want that burst across her skin with every touch of his lips, his mouth. His tongue darts out, darts out to taste the long line of sweat curving down along her collarbone and its all she can do not to run her hands through his hair, press his mouth to her skin, keep him against her, against her desperate, wanting flesh.

And then she steps backwards, steps out of the space of his arms. Because she can’t, she can’t, she has Kan and she doesn’t know Frank at all other than the thrumming desire he creates in her bones and she absolutely cannot make out with a stranger at a beach party surrounded by a couple hundred friends and enemies and strangers.

“Frank,” she says, voice low but trying to keep any hint of anger from it, any hint of accusation from it. “You can’t do that.”

Even in the darkness she can tell he’s hurt, his eyes narrow and he glances away from her, frown replacing his smirk. “Don’t tell me you didn’t want it too.”

“Frank,” she says again, sharper now, a warning he can’t help but notice. “You can’t.”

“Of course,” he says, voice so cold its like he’s another person and even in the dark she can feel his glare, the tightness of his jaw. “You have a boyfriend.”

She nods, bites her lip to keep from yelling, making a scene because she is not the bad one here, not the one who should feel like she should be apologizing. And yet she does, hates herself, hates Frank for it. “I do. And we still don't know each other.”

There’s a twitch, a jump in his jaw. “What do you want to know Laurel?” he asks, voice tight with anger. “Whatever you want from me, I’ll give it to you. But you can’t tell me you don’t want it too.”

“That’s not fair,” she tells him, taking another long step back, crossing her arms over her chest, feeling exposed, feeling naked because they’re standing, facing off, in the middle of the dancing crowd and there’s no way its not being noticed.

“So what?” he demands. “Life’s not fair. And its too goddamn short to lie about what you want.”

“I don’t want you,” she says coldly, feeling cold, feeling it all through her body and angry too, because he can’t demand things of her, she owes him nothing. “That’s not a lie.”

He scoffs and she can see the bitter roll of his eyes. “Maybe you’re right,” he tells her voice low and flat. “I don’t know you. I thought, I dunno what I thought; that you were lying to everyone to protect yourself, that you were doing it because maybe you couldn’t tell the truth. But I was wrong; you’re lying even to yourself. Maybe you’re just a liar.”

“Frank,” she begins again, pleading now, but he shrugs, scoffs again and turns away. 

“My fault I suppose,” he throws over his shoulder as he goes, his voice cold, mocking and cruel. She knows he’s trying to hurt her, knows and braces herself for it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting when it comes, doesn’t mean the blows don’t land. “For thinking I knew the first thing about you, for thinking I wanted to know more. My mistake. You’re just like all the other liars here. Worse, cause you know you’re telling a lie.”

“Don’t be an asshole,” she calls after him, trying to hurt him as he hurt her, because she’s petty, because she’s wounded and angry and lashing out. She knows enough to know that, knows why she’s doing what she’s doing, just doesn’t know how she can stop herself. “Just because I rejected you. Take it like a goddamn man.”

He whirls on her, fire in his eyes. “It’d be one thing if you didn’t want me. That’d be fine. I could deal with that, take it like a man as you say. What I can’t stand is the dishonesty, how much of a coward you are.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” she repeats for what feels like the millionth time.

“I don’t,” he agrees coldly. “But I know that much. And if this is who you are, I don’t want to know any more.”

He stalks off and Laurel’s left standing alone in the middle of the crowd. She’s grateful, grateful beyond words that either no one heard or no one cares, because no one says anything to her, no one even gives her a sidelong glance, full of false concern, they all just continue on dancing like nothing at all happened. And maybe it didn’t, Laurel thinks, maybe its all in her head, whatever she feels brewing, boiling between her and Frank, hot and fast and terrible.

She said she wasn’t going to run away, had told Frank, had told herself she wasn’t going to flee the party, but she does then, retreats down the beach with her anger and her resentment and the feeling of Frank’s eyes on her like knives.

And Kan finds her there, hours later, doesn’t notice or doesn’t ask about the tear tracks drying against her cheeks, about why she doesn’t talk for fear of the hard knot like grief in her throat. He just accepts her in all her imperfections, in all her lies and anger and she kisses him, because he is easy and he is safe and she has no reason to feel guilty because she didn’t do anything wrong.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cause this time Nicole said i have to :}  
> Y'all have her to thank...

Again, Frank ignores her in school, pretends she doesn’t exist, pretend they’ve never talked. She’s half surprised when his friends don’t glare at her, don’t knock her shoulder in the hallways with scoffs and and eyerolls, half surprised he didn’t tell them anything about what happened between them. She cant figure out why, tells herself she doesn’t care. 

But when he bursts through the fire door into the stairwell where Laurel is not not hiding out, avoiding the after school crowds, avoiding going back to the house, just avoiding, she feels a little thrill of something she’s not going to look at too closely, because now he can’t avoid her, now he has to see her.

She looks up from her textbook, knows that she shrinks back into the shadow of the stairwell at the squealing hinges of the fire door, of the echoing gunshots of footfalls on the concrete.

She knows she can’t avoid being seen, hears the clip of steps moving down, down to the landing where she’s sitting, cringes, and wishes she could vanish somehow.

She stands, ready to run, doesn’t really know why because she won’t be able to get very far without being noticed, will only draw more attention to herself.

“Laurel?” a voice suddenly asks, low and echoing harshly through the stairwell.

She looks up, meets Frank’s eyes, wide and blown, standing a few steps above the landing where Laurel has been hiding.

He’s scowling deeply, a lit joint in one hand, the other shoved deep into the pocket of his leather jacket and Laurel can smell the sweet smoke filling the stairwell, wrapping around her, filling her lungs.

She’s not sure what to say, not sure there’s anything to say so she just looks up, stares at him from where she’s pressed against the wall.

He continues staring at her, eyes sharp, like he’s weighing something, assessing something he sees in her eyes. Finally he lets his shoulders sag, lets the beginnings of a smile creep across his face and he runs his free hand through his hair sheepishly. “You want some?”

She shakes her head quickly. “No,” she whispers. “You’re gonna set the sprinklers off.”

He shrugs, takes his own long drag. “Nah,” he grins, casual and almost mocking. “I’ve been smoking down here since I started here. Ventilation’s better than it looks.”

She sniffs, hums. “Guess that’s why it never smells like weed and desperation down here.”

“Weed and desperation, huh?” he arches a thick eyebrow at her.

“If the shoe fits.”

“I’m supposed to be in detention,” he tells her, smirking around the joint. “I skipped Physics last week to go sailing again.”

Laurel hums, incapable of words, arms crossed over her chest as he leans against the stair rail, hip driving into the metal. She wants to speak, wants to ask him more about sailing, about whether the feeling was the same the second time, whether it was better, but she still isn't entirely sure he’s not going to turn on her, not going to accuse her of things they both know she’s guilty of again. She’s not sure he’s not going to try and get her to lower her guard, exploit the small, soft, tentative thing that springs up in her chest every time they talk, the thing that wants to grow larger and dangerous and smothering. So she stays still and quiet and cautious, waiting for some indication it’s safe to speak.

“And now,” he says around the joint, eyes dancing. “I’m skipping the punishment too.”

“And you skip it by hiding out in a stairwell?” she asks finally, eyebrow raised her voice flat as she tries to guard herself from whatever hurt Frank intends to bring next.

“Works for you.”

“I’m waiting for a ride,” she tells him, not sure why she’s bothering. She owes him nothing, no truth or lies or anything at all. And so far all he’s done is hurt her with the things he knows. “And I’m not the one who’s all about skipping. Kind of defeats the purpose to skip and then just hang out at school.”

He shrugs, smirking still. “There’s good acoustics in here.”

“Acoustics?”

He nods, sucks another deep lungful of pot off the joint, blows it politely off to the side. “Gonna lie here and get ripped and listen to some jazz.”

“Wouldn't peg you for a jazz man,” she quips before she can rethink her words.

His mouth quirks. “Guess I have unexpected depths.”

“Not sure if weed and jazz can really count as depth,” she drawls, ignoring the little flip in her stomach as she realizes they’re flirting, again, that they’re both letting themselves give in to the strange connection that sizzles between them, hot and fast and irresistible, letting themselves ignore all the reasons it’s a bad idea to get too close, to not resist the pull and step away from the flame, the oncoming tide, allowing themselves to be drawn, closer, always closer, though to what, Laurel isn’t sure. She ignores too the tingle burning its way through her fingers, the building desire to step forward, slide her fingers against his cheek, over his lips into his hair, to just touch, to feel.

He just smirks, takes another long pull before stubbing the joint out against the wall, tucking the remnants into the pocket of his jacket. “Guess you’ll have to get to know me and find out.”

“Who says I want to?” she grits out, the words coming instinctively.

She expects him to get angry, the fact that he doesn't proving her point better than anything else could, Laurel thinks, because she doesn’t know him, at all, doesn’t expect the quick smirk flashing across his face, the crinkling of his eyes with warmth, and the little chuckle rumbling through his chest. “You want to,” he says, certain. “You want me.”

“You want me,” she counters.

“I do,” Frank tells her, that same certainty running like a current in his voice.

Laurel says nothing, can’t say anything, doesn’t even have time, because Frank is suddenly striding down the last three steps, one hand at her hip, the other sliding against her cheek and tangling into her hair, lips meeting hers insistently, almost angrily, like he’s trying to fight her, claim her, stealing her breath. Her back slams into the cinderblock wall of the stairwell, pain rebounding through her spine, her shoulders, exhaling sharply into Frank’s mouth in shock.

Her mouth parts, opens, allows his tongue to slip inside, duel with hers, still angry, still aggressive and yet his lips are sweet, soft even as he tries to devour her, consume her.

“Frank,” she breathes, intends to push him away, but winds up pulling him closer to her, fingers clutching at his shoulders, keeping her lips against his, kissing him hungrily.

Desire bursts through her body, runs across her limbs like lightning, settles low in her gut, low and sweet and aching. His lips whisper against her jawline, against the arc of her neck, hand suddenly cupping her breast, thumb seeking out the already stiff peak of her nipple through the thin material of her bra, her uniform shirt.

She should push him away, she knows she should, but her body doesn't seem to want to let her, doesn't want to give up the sweet burn of desire Frank's touch is stoking in her blood. She just clutches him closer, kisses him again and again, teeth sinking into his lower lip until he hisses, until his hips buck desperately into hers.

“Fuck,” he gasps against her skin, stubble scraping against her throat until Laurel is forced to throw her head back, allow him better access to her body to all the desperate aching spaces.

His hand slips under the material of her skirt, teeth catching against her collarbone as a finger brushes, soft, hesitant, against the material of her panties, finding her practically soaking for him, her thighs sticky and sensitive, gasping into his skin as he strokes against her again.

“I knew you wanted me,” he growls triumphantly, the press of his fingers never slowing. “You’d never be half so wet if you didn’t fucking want me.”

“You want me too,” she points out, a tremble in her voice, a note like a whine as his fingers circle her clit once, twice and again.

He nods, just before his teeth press against her pulse point. “But I’m not the one that lies about it.”

Laurel tries to keep her hips still, tries to keep them from jumping to meet the glide of his fingers, the smooth press of them, still light, still too soft, wanting, needing more. Just more. “You don’t know…oh…you don’t know what I was doing before you got here.”

His smirk stretches wide, feral, pupils wide as he inhales sharply, his own hips bucking involuntarily against hers. His fingers circle against her clit in time with his words and Laurel’s eyes slip closed, breath coming harsh now, unable to disguise how close she is, how much she wants him. “What? What were you doing? Just looked to me like you were studying.”

She tries shrugging, just a little hitch of her shoulders, but Frank’s tongue is against her collarbone again and the gesture dies somewhere. Her fingers tug at his hair, drag him back to her lips, kissing him deeply, fiercely, like she hopes to gain something from him. “Maybe chem gets me wet.”

He laughs, sharply, drawing back from her to laugh, his fingers stilling against her center so that Laurel has to bite back a moan, a cry of desperation at the loss of friction. “Hmmmmm,” he purrs low against her skin. “I’d say having chemistry definitely gets you wet.”

“Shut up,” she demands viciously, rolling her eyes, tugging hard at the hair at his temples.

“Or what?” he murmurs smirking now, pleased and cocky, fingers still hovering just where she needs him, but unmoving, refusing to touch her now. “You gonna tell me to stop? Walk away from me? From this?”

“Yeah,” she whines in frustration. “If you're not gonna fuck me.”

Frank gasps at her words, at the unexpected curse, mouth falling open as he swallows thickly and his pupils blowing wide. He seems shocked, she thinks, shocked and stunned.

“Well,” she prompts, breathy but with an edge to her voice. “You gonna make it worth my while to stick around?”

He still looks a little shocked, his smirk faltering, but his fingers begin to move again, gliding against her folds, slow and soft until he coaxes a whine from her throat, the buck of her hips into his, muffling her cries against his neck. “You this demanding with your boyfriend?” he asks, voice a low warning.

She’s too far gone for his words to have any effect on her, for Laurel to even be capable of thinking of Kan, of the depths of her betrayal, here, in a shitty cinderblock stairwell with Frank’s hand under her skirt and his lips sucking dark bruises against her throat. She no longer has it in her to care, to feel anything approaching guilt. “No,” she rasps. “Because he knows how to get me off.”

Frank pulls back again, eyes blown wide, his breath coming harshly though he doesn’t stop the stroke of his fingers. “That a challenge?”

She shrugs, tries for casual, though the jump of her hips, the quickness of her breath betrays her. “Just stating facts.”

He doesn’t say anything more, but the pace of his fingers increases, pushing her panties out of the way to slide two fingers inside her, pumping hard and fast as his thumb moves against her clit.

“Fuck,” she whispers, kisses Frank deeply so he can swallow down her curse, tongue stroking against hers.

“When I’m done with you,” he growls, teeth sliding against the bruise he’s left on her throat. “You’re not gonna care about him, about what he can do.”

“So far you’re all talk,” she hisses, nails scraping down the expanse of his back.

“Still got you wet,” he points out, grin crooked and pleased.

“Not the same,” she counters. “Not the same as making me come.”

Frank chuckles low, the sound moving desperately through her blood, going straight to her center. His fingers begin to increase their pace, almost punishing, adding a third finger to the two already inside her, filling her totally, fully, her walls clenching around Frank’s knuckles.

His hand wanders back to her breast, rucking her shirt up and fingers slipping under the cup of her bra to let him roll the stiff bud between his fingers. His breath comes harshly against her neck, stuttering and she can still feel the hard press of his cock against her hip, proof of how much he wants her, sending a little thrill of pride, of dizzying confidence running through her.

She doesn’t know what it is that runs between them, that makes her want him with something like desperation, with something like madness, she just knows that whatever she feels that makes her need him like air, well, she thinks he has the same craving too, thinks that he wants her despite himself, despite all logic and reason, he wants her, and she wants him.

Its terrible and its disastrous and she knows it’ll lead only to pain, only to ruin but she doesn’t think either of them are in a position to step back, to stop. Because the sweet stroke of Frank’s fingers has her so, so close, circling her clit with strokes that slow now, in dizzying contrast to the quick pumping of his fingers inside her and the glide of his thumb against her breast.

“You want me because you shouldn't,” he rasps against her throat, lips whispering against her collarbone. “You want me because you think I’m no good for you. Let me show you how good I can be.”

She tries to ignore his words, tries to ignore the surge of want that darts through her at his smooth purr, at the evidence of how badly he wants her, tries to ignore it, clenches her jaw, tries to slow the press of her hips into his hand, tries not to tighten around Frank’s fingers, to slow her harsh breaths, but none of it works, none of it works. Instead she's left with only Frank’s touch to focus on, his fingers inside her, thumb against her clit, the warm press of his lips and his chest, strong, solid against her own.

Its only Frank, Frank and her and nothing else left in the world and Laurel comes with a high keening cry she smothers against his skin, clutching desperately at Frank’s broad shoulders as her legs sag beneath her, as pleasure breaks against her bones like waves, shattering against her, shattering her. 

He kisses her, harshly, desperately, drinks down her cries as his fingers continue to stroke her through the last of her orgasm, until the shaking in her bones stops, until her breathing stills, evens out.

“That was,” he begins, swallows, stops with a long, shaky inhale.

“Yeah,” she murmurs, stepping back as best she can while she’s still pinned against the cinderblock wall, twisting out of his arms and smoothing her skirt down her thighs, still sensitive and trembling. “Yeah.”

“Good?” he says, though Laurel can’t tell whether he’s stating or asking; his voice is still breathy and shuddering.

“It’s,” she starts, falters. “It’s…yeah.”

“Did a number on you, huh?” Frank smirks.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she snaps, though with less heat than she intended. 

His smirk grows. “Musta been good if you can’t even admit it.”

“Nothing special,” she scoffs, knowing they both hear the lie in her voice.

This time he just laughs, head thrown back, throat open and exposed to her. Laurel steps forward, presses her lips to the curve of his Adam’s apple, to his mouth.

He backs her into the wall again, hands on either side of her shoulders, kisses her desperately, hips arcing into hers. And then her phone chimes from across the room, where she left it in her bag. They both freeze, lips still fused but bodies stiff as the phone squawks again.

Laurel ducks under his arm, steps away from him and back towards her discarded textbooks, her bag, her phone.

“I gotta go,” she tells him, hastily picking up her things, knowing the phone is Sofia, done with track practice now and able to take Laurel back to the house she’s only mostly avoiding.

“Wait, what?” Frank asks, and Laurel glances over her shoulder to see Frank standing there, stunned and gaping, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open.

“I gotta go,” she repeats, finding herself feeling bad, a little wriggling note of guilt curling sour in her stomach. She can’t keep Sofia waiting or she won’t have a ride at all, will be stuck at school and forced to call her father’s driver or beg Kan to borrow his brother’s car and rescue her. She’s certainly not going to use Frank for a way out of school, certainly not going to prioritize hooking up, cheating, she corrects herself, over her ride somewhere else, especially because Sofia is often just as reluctant to go home as Laurel is, will drive around for an hour or two until it gets dark instead of taking her directly home.

Frank makes a sound like a whine in the back of his throat, shoulders sagging. “Laurel...”

“I can’t,” she tells him. “Sorry.”

He exhales slowly, sharply, scrubs a hand across his face, sags against the wall as Laurel slings her bag over her shoulder, trips quickly up the steps towards the fire door. “Fuck,” she hears him exhale as she pulls the door open, hears the slide of his zipper, the rasp of his breath mixing with the rasp of his hand as it begins to move over his cock, slides against the cheap material of his chinos.

She hazards a final glance as she slips out into the hallway, a final glance back at Frank, hunched over desperately in the dim little stairway, hand moving furiously over his swollen cock, breath harsh as he breathes out her name again and again.

And when, two days later, she squeezes her eyes shut and thinks of Frank instead of Kan, when she has her hand buried between her legs, gliding through her dripping folds and can think only of Frank’s mouth against her fluttering pulse, can think only of his hands roaming over her body, imagine his mouth moving over her center, she can only find it in herself to feel a brief pang of guilt, of grief, because she loves Kan, God does she love Kan, but Frank, Frank does something to her, ties her into knots, reduces her to a creature that thrives only on need, on want. She’s drawn to Frank like a moth to a flame, can do nothing but give herself over to that wanting because its far, far too powerful for her to stand against, she’s a matchstick house and he’s a hurricane, she the rabbit and he’s the wolf. There’s not a thing she can do to resist the things her blood, her bones feel for him, even if she’d wanted to.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for another delay in posting...I'll try to be better  
> Leave me a lil something if you're digging this thing :)

Everything changes after that, everything and nothing. He still mostly ignores her in school, or she ignores him. Either way, they don't talk much, not until their paths cross when they’re both alone, afraid almost that someone will be able to see, in their eyes, their gestures, the things that they try to bury, the things they can’t ignore, the cravings they can never sate.  
And then, one day, he shows up in the library after school and Laurel can feel her thighs grow sticky just at the sight of him, a little clench low in her gut that rises to ripple across her chest, stop her breathing for just a second too long. She watches him, half expects to see a little nod, a casual flick of his eyes towards the farthest corner but instead, Frank approaches her, drops down into the chair next to her with a heavy thump, a heavy sigh passing across his teeth.

Laurel thinks about saying something, asking why he’s there, what he’s doing, what has shifted in the world to lead to him sitting next to her like there’s nothing strange about it, nothing out of the ordinary. She doesn’t of course, because if he wants to pretend its normal, pretend that they’re friends, that they can study together without the same thick tension, the same desperate wanting strangling their tongues, setting their skin on fire and their hearts pounding in their chests, then Laurel’s fine with pretending too. She’s a master at pretending after all, isn't going to let anything Frank does throw her off her game.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” she replies slowly, caution and something edged, bladed stumbling across her words, like she can’t quite commit to the warning she wants to send him, can’t quite admit what his presence really makes her feel.

“You still willing to tutor me?” he asks her, leaning close, far closer than is safe for either of them, arm brushing against hers as he flashes her a crooked smirk.

Laurel blinks. “Is that a euphemism for something?”

Frank lets out a sharp bark of laughter, can’t even summon the will to look embarrassed or ashamed as the librarian fixes him with a long, angry glare. It only makes his lips curl wider, only makes Laurel want to sink her teeth into his lip until she can wipe the expression from his face, leaving him stunned and gasping. “Nah,” he tells her, chuckle still rippling through his words, rippling ever outward in slowly widening circles. “Not a euphemism. I need help with Spanish.”

“And you couldn’t ask, oh, I dunno, anyone else?”

Again, that ripple of laughter, like something bubbling up out of him that he simply can’t contain. And again, that almost frantic urge to slide her mouth against his, her tongue against his like a hunger, like a craving. “Nah,” he tells her again. “I think you’re just the person I’m looking for.”

“For Spanish tutoring?” Laurel repeats, not letting incredulity worm its way into her words, not letting any hint of emotion worm its way into her words. She knows what he’s asking, what he’s proposing really, knows she’s going to say yes, knows she’s going to give him anything, everything he wants. But for now at least, she wants to make him work for it. 

“Well I’m certainly willing to make it a multidisciplinary arrangement if you are,” he says, eyes sparking in a way that makes Laurel certain she’s walked into a trap he set for her, expertly crafted and laid and now closing slowly around her ankles. “Maybe throw some health classes in?”

“Didn’t want to be too obvious, call it sex ed?” she quips, rolling her eyes because Frank’s obvious, almost hopelessly, predictably so.

“Oh we can call it whatever you want,” Frank smirks. “Long as the outcome’s the same.”

“You mean as long as everyone gets off?”

“Yeah,” he shrugs casually. “You teach me Spanish, I’ll repay you with some seriously great sex.”

She raises an eyebrow tauntingly. “You're not full of yourself at all huh?”

“Hey,” he says with a little cocky tilt of his head. “Made you come, didn’t I?”

“Doesn’t mean I’m gonna let it happen again,” Laurel snaps with far less vehemence than she had intended.

Frank chuckles low, the sound rolling across her skin, a little shiver rippling across her shoulders, the small of her back. “Ok,” he murmurs, deep and low. “We’ll pretend you believe that. But I know you can’t resist me, that you’re gonna be begging me to fuck you.”

Laurel scoffs, rolls her eyes so he doesn’t see the truth of it on her face. She changes the subject because she can’t argue this with him, can’t argue she doesn’t want him, with an almost insatiable hunger, simply changes the subject so she can avoid thinking about it, about Frank’s fingers against her clit, about the sudden heavy wetness between her thighs, the clench of desire and desperation. “What do you need Spanish help with?”

“Just about everything,” he tells her with a huffing little sigh, scrubbing a hand across his face, his cheek. “I keep mixing it up with Italian.”

“You speak Italian?” she asks, more out of a desire not to let the silence linger than anything else. Normally she relishes silence, cloaks herself in it like a shield, a disguise, like camouflage, but not with Frank. With Frank the silence echoes as loud as the screams in Laurel’s ears that never seem to end. Frank’s silence makes her want to speak, forge some connection with him, tentative and fragile still, but strengthening, hardening, makes her want to be something more than what she is.

He nods, smirking like its something to be proud of, something admirable that he knows Italian, that the words in his head get jumbled with Spanish. Laurel would give anything sometimes for words to come clear for her, to slip from her lips without thought, without checking and rechecking whether she should speak them at all. Silence comes too easy to her and words sometimes not at all, not sufficient to express all the things running through her mind. “With a name like Frank Delfino, you think I could get away without knowing it?”

Laurel shrugs, though she feels her lips pull into the beginnings of a smile, hesitant, but still there. She’s always known Spanish, cannot remember a time when her thoughts didn’t flow as easily in Spanish as in English, can’t remember a time when she favored one over the other. She’s never even thought about it really, learning a language. She just always has, even French flowing through her brain like it was always there, connections snapping together and sentences flowing from her. She listens, listens to the silences and the stillness and the things that are nothing like words and then when speech finally comes its so much easier to understand, so much easier to decipher even if speech itself sticks against her teeth, catches against her tongue.

“Well I do,” he answers, like he’s sharing a secret with her. “Not well, but enough to get by. Better than I speak Spanish.”

“And so it all jumbles together?”

“Yeah,” he nods. “Just about.”

“So what in particular?” she asks, realizing only too late that she’s agreed to help him, hasn’t even put up a token fight. She’s not sure she has anything inside her capable of resisting Frank, not on this. Not on anything else either.

“Conjugation, of course,” he confesses with a little huffing laugh.

“Of course.”

He shifts again, shifts his chair closer to hers and Laurel feels the hammering of her heart, loud in her chest as his knee brushes against the side of hers, casual, nothing in Frank’s face even indicating he’s noticed except for the slight widening of his eyes, the sharp exhale that’s almost too soft to hear. But Laurel hears, she notices, like the universe has slowly taken on Frank’s shape, like there’s nothing else that matters in the world. And maybe, maybe its true. “So?” he asks, suddenly soft, suddenly shy and timid. “You gonna help me?”

He’s embarrassed, Laurel thinks suddenly, the realization startling her as it hits, soft, across her chest. He’s embarrassed to have anyone else tutor him, to know how completely he’s failing at the language spoken casually by St. Anne’s population as easily as English. He’s embarrassed, but he trusts her, trusts her to help him without laughing or judging him. She wants to warn him, tell him she’s not kind, she’s not the girl he thinks she is. She won’t mock him, certainly, she’s not cruel, or not cruel in that way, but she’s not soft, she’s sharp teeth and hard edges and barely concealed fury and grief so strong she sometimes wonders if she can taste it. She won’t mock him, but she doesn’t have the strength within her to be kind, not anymore, if she ever did. She’d thought, at first, it had just been an excuse, just been a ruse to get her from a different angle when sex failed, but now she knows its more. He really wants her help and that’s a far more jarring thought than believing

Frank simply wants to hook up with her again.

Laurel hums, something teasing rippling across the sound, unintended, although she finds herself relishing the sound. She likes knowing she has it in her still, that there is something inside her, still, besides anger and hurt, that Frank can draw it out of her, his sparkling eyes, his crooked grin a divining rod for the things she’d thought she’d lost, the hidden fragile things she’d locked away deep inside her chest to keep them safe, had all but forgotten about. “Maybe. What's in it for me?”

His slanted grin grows wider until she can see a hint of Frank’s teeth. “I can think of a lot of things on offer.”

“Gotta offer me more than hooking up in a stairwell,” she instructs sternly, though can’t help the wolffish grin slipping across her lips, the thing between them sparking to life, crackling and growing like wildfire.

“We can meet at a coffee shop,” he offers. “I’ll treat you to whatever you want.”

Laurel rolls her eyes. “You do realize just how rich my father is, right?”

“I do,” he nods. There’s something stiff about the nod, something cautious, serious, like he’s heard all the swirling rumors about her father, about his vast, extensive and only semi-legal empire, about his current position in the state senate, about the absolutely absurd wealth he commands. “I expect its nice to have someone treat you sometimes then.”

Laurel smiles thinly. “Maybe.”

Frank smiles like he’s won a victory, shining and triumphant, sending anticipation, excitement skittering through her chest.

“How bout Tuesdays?” he asks her, knocking his knee against hers again, soft and sweet like they’re sharing some kind of secret, like they’re allies, like they’re something more than two near strangers. It shatters the tension though, gets her laughing again because its what Frank wanted of her and she’s putty in his hands.

“Can’t,” she tells him, almost regretfully, surprised at how genuine the sentiment actually is. She shouldn’t and she knows it, but she wants to spend time with Frank, wants to get to know him, see inside to the center of him, the secrets that make him up, the strange confluence of quirks and cyphers and chemistry that draw her to him, irresistibly, like magnetic force, like gravity or destiny or madness. “Got a thing.”

She doesn’t go into detail, about the therapy her father insisted she get, after, about the hour and a half she spends every Tuesday sitting on an uncomfortable faux leather couch, engaged in a silent battle of wills with the woman her father chose to listen to her, to diagnose her, fix her. She hasn’t spoken once, not in three months, nineteen sessions now, clocking in at a grand total of seventeen hundred nineteen minutes without a word. Not even to introduce herself, though that still, even now, makes her feel a little guilty, makes something sour churn in her gut for being so rude. But Laurel knows, knows with certainty, that if she opens her mouth in that room, cracks the door, she’ll let everything out, every last vicious detail, every last angry thought that races through her mind, every wish she has that she’d died in that basement, that someone had just killed her father instead, that she’s not worth ten dollars much less ten million. And she can’t do that, knows she doesn’t have the strength to face it a second time.

So she doesn’t speak, and doesn’t speak of where she goes every Tuesday, not to Kan, not to her other friends and certainly not to Frank who she doesn’t know at all.

He nods, barely seems to notice the thing like anger moving across her skin. “Wednesday then?”

“Look,” she tells him with a sigh, because she has debate on Wednesdays, student government and Latinx society on alternating Thursdays and cross country whenever she can actually find the time. She had quit everything but cross country, after, in the first days back when she was sorting through the wreckage of her life, deciding what, if anything, was salvageable, was capable of repair, had promptly decided she didn’t want any vestiges of her old life, didn’t want anything that reminded her of the person she had been.

And then, slowly, like relearning herself, relearning the new world, or the use of an amputated limb she’d let herself want again, want the things that used to interest her, give her pleasure, wanted to try and be close to the thing that she was, once, before, like maybe she could relearn herself, become that person again.

She can’t and she knows it and Laurel often feels like she’s simply going through the motions, pretending to care about things that can’t compete with the screaming in her head. She half contemplates offering to skip, because what's the damn point of debate anyway, but she doesn’t, she won’t. She’s a liar and a faker but she’s damn good at it and if she can’t recover, can’t heal she can at least make sure no one notices, at least make sure she goes through the motions.

“I can do Friday,” she tells him stiffly. “Right after school.”

“Perfect,” he tells her and somehow, somehow when Frank says it he makes it sound real, makes it sound true. “Wanna give me a preview though?” he asks with a slanted smile. “Just so I know I’ve made the right choice in hiring you.”

Laurel can feel the beginnings of something like anger flaring in her chest because he asked her for help, sought her ought and she’s the one doing him a favor and he has no right to ask any more of her. But then something eases inside her, melts under the heat of his gaze and she just laughs, finds herself rolling her eyes and grinning. Because its Frank, because he means nothing by it, because he says it only to try and get this very reaction from her. Because for the first time in what feels like forever, in this brave new world she finds herself in, now, after, she doesn’t want to be alone, wants to solve the mystery that is Frank. The more she learns about him the less she knows, the more questions she has, the more she wants to find out. She wants to let herself be a part of the world again if it’s a world Frank’s a part of.

“Absolutely not.”

* * *

  
They meet the next week though. Frank finds her after 8th period, standing slouched against her locker, waiting, as History lets out like he’s a fixture, like he’s there every afternoon.

Laurel spots him from the moment she leaves her classroom, like her eyes are drawn to him, like he’s the only light in a sea of darkness. A few people, girls mostly, sidle up to him as she makes her way down the hall, but he shakes them all off, smiles at them in a way that seems nothing like the way he smiles at her, though Laurel tells herself that’s stupid, impossibly naïve.

And yet, and yet, when he spots her, when she approaches him, cheeks already coloring, her eyes refusing to meet his, he smiles at her, so brightly it sets her reeling, smiles at her like she thinks only Kan’s ever smiled at her, like she’s the only person he wants to see, the only person in the world even worth seeing, like everyone else is a pale shadow compared to her.

She wants to see it on Frank’s face again, wants to freeze the moment and walk around in it, paint herself in his gaze, never leave.

“Hey,” he calls when she’s close, still slouched against the locker, arms crossed over his chest and his legs kicked out so that people have to walk around his feet. She thinks she can hear something like a hiccup in his voice, something like a catch, thinks she can spot his eyes widening, just a hair as he spots her.

“Hey,” she replies, too softly, her own voice too breathy, too eager.

“Don’t you mean hola?” he jokes then, refusing to step away from the locker even as she gets closer, tries to reach around him. She shoots him a look but he just smirks wider, makes it clear he has no intention of moving.

“Isn't that my line?” she asks, wanting to mirror his gesture, cross her arms over her chest, settles for playing with the straps of her backpack instead. “I’m not the one who needs Spanish help.”

“Hola then,” he tells her, voice gentling. “How was your day?”

“Glad its over,” she admits, cracking the door to him, to the things she really feels, the anger, the exhaustion always simmering just below the surface of her skin.

“Well it’s the weekend now,” he offers. “All downhill from here.”

“Haven't tutored you yet,” she quips, finally edging past him, their shoulders knocking lightly together, their bodies suddenly too close, Frank refusing to step back, step away from her so that they wind up with him practically towering over her, body curling into hers as Laurel unlocks her locker.

“Hey, I’m a quick study,” he assures her. “And really damn good with my tongue.”

And then he has the fucking gall to wink, to turn and smirk and meet her eyes and wink, the bastard, and she's halfway to smacking him, halfway to telling him the deals off if he tries anything like that again and halfway to running her lips across his throat.

Laurel settles for rolling her eyes instead, settles for doing nothing at all with her lips because she recognizes, at the last second, that they’re surrounded by classmates, hundreds of pairs of eyes and a gossip mill she barely understands the extent of, that if she gets too close she’ll blow up the only good things she still has in her life, her anonymity among her classmates, Kan.

“So,” he continues, perhaps realizing he’s gone too far, said too much. “I was thinking Zeb’s for tutoring. Its never busy.”

Laurel nods as she pulls textbooks out. “Fair warning though, you’re getting me all the rice pudding I can stomach.”

He arches an eyebrow, skeptical and eager in equal measure. “Rice pudding huh?”

“And café con leche,” she adds pointedly.

Frank chuckles, stuffs his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels. “Well I’ve got a nice crisp $20 and all of its yours if you want it.”

“Lets see how much you make me work to get you up to speed,” she offers, because she knows, or she thinks she knows that Frank doesn’t have anywhere near the kind of money she has, the kind of money she’d mostly come to take for granted until the day when all the money in the world hadn't mattered one iota, hadn’t done shit to save her when it really counted. She hasn’t had a clue what to do with money since, hoard it like diamonds or spend it like water, hasn’t had a clue how to ransom back what was taken from her.

His grin goes sharp, like she’s issued him a challenge he can’t help but accept. “We already know how well I can put you to work.”

“From what I recall,” she tells him pointedly, sharply. “You were the one doing most of the work.”

Frank’s lips twist, scowling at her like he’s trying to figure out the coded things beneath her words, the things she’s not saying, the feelings she’s covering up. “Is that how you like it?” he asks finally, an edge in his words like worry, undercutting the cockiness in his words, the teasing edge that has Laurel instinctively clenching her thighs together, mind drifting back to the sweet burn of pleasure as his fingers thrust into her. “To be taken care of?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” she tells him bluntly, forcing herself not to choke on the lies as she speaks them. Its none of his damn business, it really really isn’t. Unless she wants it to be, unless she allows it to be, allows Frank to touch her again, allows herself to want the things he made her feel. But she can’t, she won’t. She has so few good things left in her life, she won’t risk them on something that already reeks of disaster. There is nothing about Frank that doesn’t spell disaster for her and once, just after everything, that might have tempted her, might have been what she needed, what she wanted. Just after it happened she’d wanted to tear down the world, level everything in her life and start over from the rubble. Nothing had seemed to matter then. 

But now, well, now she’s gotten used to the wreckage of her life, learned to survive in the blast area, carved out a space for herself again. Now she can’t risk the little she has on tearing everything down and rebuilding. She doesn’t have the strength and she certainly doesn’t have the courage, every last reserve was spent to survive what happened. Now she’s a broken shell of a thing, now she’s an empty vessel and she has to learn to survive with that too, with what’s been left to her when the rest of who she once was died back in Mexico. “What happened before is never going to happen again.”

There’s a brief moment when she can see the anger in his eyes, anger and hurt, fury and sorrow warring together until what he schools his face into is its usual cocky mask. He gives her a slow, thin lipped nod. “I don’t think you really mean that princess. I think the harder you try to resist me the better its gonna be when you come begging for more.”

Laurel scoffs, rolls her eyes, breathes a sigh of relief as she almost, almost believes her own act, that she managed to lie convincingly, managed to choke back the thing she tells herself is rage, the thing that tastes instead like panic and terror, keep it off her face. She never, never fucking begs. Not Frank, not anyone. Not ever again.

“Don’t call me princess again,” she tells him in place of all the things she wants to say. “Or this deal is off. And don’t use it as an excuse to try and get in my pants.”

Frank smirks, his eyes narrowing in a way that feels maybe like Laurel’s handed him a victory in a battle she didn’t know she was surrendering. “Ok,” he tells her and she can hear, can fucking hear the ‘princess’ that goes unsaid at the end of his words. “Deal. But only cause I don’t think I’m gonna have to try at anything at all.”

Laurel swallows back the words that bloom like bombs against her tongue, swallows them down so that they explode deep inside her chest, so that they tear through her flesh alone, leave Frank unscathed. Instead she rolls her eyes, slams her locker shut a little too loudly and fixes Frank with a look that she hopes stings with impatience, lets him know just how much of her time he’s wasting on this stupid tutoring venture even though she’s certain he’s done his research, certain he already knows she has nothing waiting for her after this, no obligations or activities, no one waiting on her. In fact, her usual Friday activities since it happened have been going down to her boat, alternating between skulling from the bottles of rum she steals weekly from her father and convinces herself he doesn’t notice and racing herself across the water, trying to outrun things that cling to her like shadows, that might be just as much a part of Laurel, just as impossible to flee.

She hasn’t yet decided which is less effective at numbing the things inside her she refuses to let herself feel. Now, Laurel thinks, she’ll try a third option, doubts it’ll get her any further than the first two.

“Let’s skip the coffee,” she tells him impulsively. “I have something better in mind.”

She expects him to make a quip about the stairwell again, but she knows nothing about Frank, that much is clear and instead he just gives her a look of expectation, waits for her to continue with a pleased, eager grin, eyebrows climbing with surprise and interest.

“Let’s go to my boat,” she tells him before she can rethink it, convince herself of the disaster bringing Frank into the only place she feels safe anymore will result in.

“Yeah?” he asks, brows climbing just a little higher, like he can hear in her voice how sacred her little Hobie is, how closely she guards access to it. She’s barely let Kan come aboard the boat, only once or twice since her father gave it to her for her quince and never since it happened, never since the old Laurel stopped existing. But Frank, well, Frank makes her feel like maybe the new Laurel, the Laurel that survived is enough, is good enough, makes her feel like maybe she doesn’t need a secret hideout, that maybe she can be human again instead of a creature made of stone and howling fury.

She nods, heart hammering in her chest, terror and anticipation warring in her blood.

Frank grins, something hungry in the cast of his mouth, in the flaming blue of his eyes. “If I impress you, you gonna reward me?”

Laurel hums, half certain Frank is going to make some kind of obvious sexual joke, make her roll her eyes and snort and give him a warning glance that’s not quite as sharp as she would have wished. “Maybe. We can work something out. If you behave.”

He gives her a mocking salute. “I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”

And Laurel, unable to resist, rolls her eyes, again, just as she knew she would, laughs at how meaningless her frustration is in comparison to the eager thing like anticipation, like watchfulness and wanting. “Somehow I can’t imagine that ever being true.”

“Then you,” he tells her with a smirk. “Don’t know anything about me either.”

She’s about to say something pointed, something that edges towards insulting, hurtful because she’s not soft or sweet or kind, she’s a thorn without even the disguise of a rose, when he continues.

“But,” he tells her with another look that edges just the right side of another wink. “You’re in luck. Anything you want from me, anything I can give you, its yours.”

“I want everything,” she tells him then, knows her lips curl back into a snarl, teeth like fangs, nothing even in the same universe as kindness, as humor threading through her voice. She means it though, she wants everything, everything he’s willing to give her and everything he won’t. The Laurel that exists now, after, has a hunger inside her, insatiable and selfish, wants to take and take, never be asked to give anything of herself ever again. If she was kind once, before, and she never, never was, she’s even less so now, that too was stripped of her during those terrible sixteen days, is just another item on the never-ending list of things she’s lost, no, of things that have been stolen from her, ripped from her before she was able to even realize their value, even able to realize she might have wanted to keep them.

And Frank, well, she thinks he might be truthful, honest, might mean it when he says he’ll offer up anything, everything to her. She isn’t sure he’s offering her empty promises and pretty lies so much as cold, honest truth, so much as a surrender she hasn’t even asked for.

“Done,” he tells her, like he can read her thoughts, knows the things she wants from him, the things she wants to steal that he gives her freely. “Now how the hell we getting to your boat?”

Laurel shrugs, turning away from him and stalking down the hall without waiting to see if Frank follows her. “Bus of course.”


	6. Chapter 6

He makes a skeptical little noise and though she can’t see him, Laurel knows he grins ruefully, shakes his head and then follows after her, drawn behind her on a tether she’s only just beginning to learn the strength of, just beginning to learn its power. “Bus?”

She lets herself shrug again, casually, careful to try and offer him the illusion that its her choice, that its some strange affectation of her vast, unknowable wealth that she doesn’t drive. That's what everyone else thinks, she’s heard the rumors too, that she’s just too rich to even bother, able to rely on her father’s driver when there’s no one she can flash a smile at, convince them to help, that she could have any car she wants and her father would buy it from her, but that she’s waiting until she’s eighteen to get her own helicopter, her own plane, once she heard it was perhaps even a rocket. Its none of those things, though Laurel wishes, desperately sometimes, that she were that spoiled, that selfish, that caricature of herself and not the creature that she is.

Not even Kan knows the real reason, she remembers muttering some unconvincing lie about a near miss at a traffic circle in Monterrey making her a little gun shy, making her want to delay the moment when she has to drive again. The real reason of course is she’s still not medically cleared to do so, still hasn’t convinced her doctor that she’s managed to shake off the last lingering effects of the concussion that was by far the easiest thing to heal from out of the hundred thousand things she carried back with her, after it was all over.

She mostly doesn’t notice the post concussion syndrome the doctor is convinced she still suffers from, the hammering, pounding thing that made her feel like her head had become a bell, her vision shaky and her ears ringing and everything, everything vibrating at a frequency that made her sick beyond words, made it impossible to concentrate on anything but making it stop, can mostly manage the moments when the world tilts on its axis again. But still, no driving, not yet. 

Laurel’s still not sure she’d want to drive, even if she did get medically cleared, because it’d be just one more thing, one more faded scar that vanishes into nothing, just one more nagging little voice asking her why she just can’t move on, just can’t get better, just one more reminder that time marches on but she’s still stuck, back there, still has part of herself, trapped in amber, still lingering down in the basement of an abandoned house in Monterrey, waiting for a rescue that will never come. It’d be one more drop added to the unending bucket of questions she asks herself that all boil down to the same thing; why can’t you just heal?

So Laurel gives Frank, this stupidly persistent boy, gives him no explanation, just turns and catches his eyes and gives him a grin that she knows he won’t be able to resist. No boy has ever resisted this smile, slight and tempting and full of promises she knows she doesn’t have the power to keep and lets him make up his own stories about what it means, what the future holds. It makes him follow her without another word, follow the twitch of her hair as she flips it casually over her shoulder, follow the tug she gives the tether between them like its little more than a leash, like he doesn’t realize it goes both ways.  
She catches his grin as he turns away, rueful and crooked and a little shell shocked, like he’s only just beginning to realize the dangerous things inside Laurel. And yet, and yet, there’s something sharp about it too, like maybe if she looks hard enough Laurel can see the glint of Frank’s own teeth, like maybe the same terrible, unchained beast lurks beneath his skin, like maybe the things inside herself she hates most are calling out to him, are the things he finds himself drawn to. 

She’s just not sure anymore what that means, whether its good or bad or means anything at all. Things have been jumbled, ever since it happened, but Frank well, Frank makes her feel as though perhaps gravity has simply been a trick of her mind, a lie she’s been telling herself to make sense of things that can’t ever be explained.

“Alright,” he calls after her, breaking into a jog she can hear against the linoleum of the hallway, his scuffed black dress shoes hurrying to catch up. “Bus it is.”

He flashes her another grin as he pulls along beside her, no longer content to ride in her wake. Laurel thinks, fleetingly, of Kan, wonderful, gentle Kan, who she thinks would coast behind her until they were both old and grey, would follow wherever she lead, always careful to have her back, even when the danger has long since passed.

“You don’t have a car?” she asks, hazarding a glance in his direction out of the corner of her eye, furtively, like she’s wary of him catching her, seeing her interest.

Frank shakes his head, shrugs, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets making him look sheepish, making his shoulders curl in, small and hunched. “You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?”

“How I’m the only senior without a car,” he finishes before Laurel’s even got the words out, like he’d told the story half a hundred times and is simply going through familiar motions now.

She shrugs, turns and fixes him with a long, hard look. Some rumors she listens to, some rumors she pointedly ignores; there’ve been enough about Laurel herself that she does her best to stay ignorant of the worst of them. There is nothing like truth to be had at St. Anne’s and she’s had to give up anything like the luxury of clinging to falsehoods. “No, I hadn’t heard that.”

“It’s not part of my probation,” he tells her after a moment, not quickly like he’s trying to reassure her, but slowly and resignedly, like he knows that’s the inevitable next question.

“I didn’t think it was,” she tells him, careful and pointed so that its clear she’s telling him the truth.

“Its not,” he says again, though it doesn’t sound defensive, insistent. He sounds like he wants her to know the truth. “My uncle just doesn’t have the money right now. And we’re not sure how long I’ll be staying down here and…”

“I don’t drive either,” she cuts him off. “You know that too, right?”

Frank nods slowly, like he’s not sure what exactly Laurel’s intentions are by telling him. “I do.”

“You don’t have to do that then,” she tells him, voice gentling.

“Explain?”

“No,” Laurel laughs before she can help herself. “Give me a backstory. You don’t drive, so what?”

Frank chuckles wryly. “You just don’t want to have to explain things to me when the tables are flipped.”

“Might be,” Laurel allows with a dismissive little shrug, pushing open the fire doors decisively, refusing to look behind her, refusing to look at any of the lingering crowd in front of her, all the people that have now seen her and Frank Delfino leaving school together.

Frank hums, lips twisting as he smiles. “Someday you’re gonna tell me.”

“I might,” she lies, though she’s certain she’ll never be at a point where she can speak of the things that were done to her, can even allow herself to look directly at them. Even the effects, even the lingering scars aren’t slow ripples across a pond, they’re tidal waves racing towards the shore, ready to level everything in the water’s path. She’s not sure she’ll ever be whole again, even once her jumbled brain stops betraying her, thinks there’ll always be aftershocks more like earthquakes themselves threatening to collapse the universe on top of her once again. She knows she’ll never speak of these things, to Frank or anyone else, never admit the damage that’s been done. She’s a liar, she’s always been a liar, but she’s damn good at it, she’s the goddamn best. She’s her father’s daughter after all.

“You will,” he insists, full of that smirking arrogance, that thing that verges on certainty like he can see into the future, see the path laid out before them. “One of these days.”

Laurel doesn't bother to set him straight, tell him all the reasons he's wrong, just stays silent, holds her own counsel until they reach the bus stop.

Thankfully there aren’t any St. Anne’s students waiting at the stop when they arrive, most of the school shunning public transportation as something that only public school kids take so she doesn’t have to glance over her shoulder, come up with excuses and explanations for why she and Frank are together, doesn’t have to worry about what might come of her new connection to him. Its not that she’s embarrassed to be seen with him, its just that she doesn’t think she has the words for what they are, for why they’re suddenly hanging out when they've never been anything even approaching even acquaintances. Its too much information she doesn’t have the power to give.

But they make it onto the bus without incident and take the slow trek down to the marina where Laurel hides her boat. And if Frank’s knee knocks into hers every time the bus makes a left turn, too big and gangly and still growing into itself, too much for the cramped seats, she tells herself she doesn’t notice the brush of fabric against her bare knee, doesn’t notice the way her eyes swing to his face with every brush, find his eyes on hers without fail, tells herself that there’s nothing to the way her fingers flit down to the hem of her skirt, try to tug it down her thighs in a way that only serves for the rough fabric to ride further up her legs, expose another centimeter of skin to Frank’s gaze, tells herself she doesn’t notice the faint press of his arm against hers, warm and soft and somehow everything and nothing like Kan’s, tells herself its nothing until she almost believes it.

And when she finds herself wanting more points of contact, hyper aware of every millimeter of space they share, finds herself wanting to press her body along the long line of his, Laurel just swallows hard and tells herself its nothing. She’s attracted to Frank, she certainly can’t deny that, isn’t skillful enough at self-deception to try and play that game with herself, but she’s nothing if not disciplined, nothing if not brilliant at tucking things away and telling herself not to look at them too hard. So Laurel just clenches her back teeth and tells herself that the feeling like lightening walking up her arm every time Frank’s skin glides against hers is nothing more than the kind of base desire she can work through the next time she sees Kan, the next time she has fifteen minutes alone in her room, nothing more, nothing more.

But all that seems to vanish when they step onto the gently rolling dock and Frank spies her boat for the first time and Laurel watches Frank see her boat for the first time and the twin thoughts in her head are simply that love is strange and complicated and messy, twin thoughts that she shakes off with no more than a little flick of a mental switch, more thoughts she refuses to examine.

Because Frank’s eyes simply glow with pleasure, with excitement the second he sees her tiny one man catamaran, a grin that no longer slants spreading across his face, soft and yearning and childlike and Laurel, well, Laurel isn't sure what kind of defenses she can mount to this attack, what she can tell herself to stop the feeling of breathlessness that blooms across her chest, like she’s about to dive into cold, dark water, her whole body vibrating with the effort it takes not to twine her fingers with Frank’s, not to share in some of the joy she can see on his face, bask in the reflected light of his grin.

He pauses there on the dock and Laurel waits beside him, eyes turned towards his face, waiting and expectant, though for what she couldn’t say.

“Now I get it,” he says finally with a little knowing hum. “Why you always look like you wanna be somewhere else. It makes sense now.”

“I don’t,” she begins before swallowing back the lie. Frank can tell, she thinks, can separate the lies she’s constantly telling from what's real, can hear some tell, some notch in her voice or twitch to her lips when she’s making up another untruth.

He doesn’t do anything to draw attention to her words, pretends he never noticed them and she would demand to know why he’s being so kind except she can’t bear to know the reason. “There enough room to study on that thing?”

Laurel shrugs, glad the moment’s passed. “We’ll make it work.”

Frank nods and another grin, wider, spreads across his face as he hikes the strap of his backpack further up his shoulder. “Cool.”

And then Laurel leads him down to her boat, steps on board and doesn’t even find herself flinching when Frank follows after her, the first person she’s allowed onto the little skiff, feet echoing off the deck and the boat tilting beneath their feet as his weight is added to hers.

“This thing have a name?” Frank asks.

“Nope,” Laurel answers because she thinks you only give something a name when you share it, when it becomes something that other people claim ownership of. Her boat is her own, only hers, and she clings tightly to it, greedily, and so it has no need for a name.

“Poor thing’s nameless,” he murmurs, running his hand along the mast in something like sympathy.

She rolls her eyes, drops down onto the deck, feet tumbling over the edge to dangle above the water as Laurel debates throwing off her shoes, dragging her toes through the water. “Stop stalling,” she instructs him. “The boat’s been nameless for years, it hasn’t been a problem yet.”

“Ok,” he tells her, though he makes no move to sit, to pull out his textbook. “Spanish then. We can worry about a name later.”

Laurel swallows back the impulse to tell him the boat’s name isn’t up for debate, tell him he’s being pretty damn presumptuous about something that has nothing to do with him, but then she leans back, tilts her head up and through the golden afternoon sunlight and she sees Frank’s fingers walk along the mast again, that same distant look of yearning on his face, the long afternoon shadows doing nothing to disguise the things in his eyes, the hopeless things like craving, like hunger.

The thing in his eyes, Laurel thinks, is the same thing she sometimes catches on his face when she turns, on impulse, in the hallway, catches Frank’s gaze through the crowd, naked and raw and needy, filled with a hopeless wanting, like he’s looking at an image of something he already knows is a mirage, like Laurel and the boat both are an oasis he will never reach, a paradise that will always be closed to him. It makes a shiver run up her spine and across her shoulders even in the high afternoon heat, makes her want to reach out and take his hand, tug him down beside her and press her lips to the hammering tattoo of his pulse.

And then he drops his eyes to hers, expression never changing and she knows disaster when she sees it, can see the long slow slide into the inevitable car wreck of her relationship with Frank, can see it but can’t do anything to stop it. She knows exactly what comes next, doesn’t think she has it in herself to stop it.

But then Frank drops to the deck, scoots his back against the mast and Laurel turns to face him and Laurel tries to tell herself she imagined it, imagined every thought that ends with her hips wrapped around his, with his hands against her breasts and his lips walking up her throat. She tells herself none of that is real, even though she can feel every touch in the weight of his gaze like an inevitability.

He scoots closer then, so close their knees nearly touch, angles his body into hers, curls himself near like a plant seeking the sunlight as the heavy, golden afternoon wraps itself around them, hot and thick and close as words pass between them soft and slow, as Laurel explains vocabulary and declension and conjugation.

But then Frank kicks off his stiff leather shoes, rolls the legs of his uniform pants up until he exposes long inches of shins and calves and then, and then, he tugs his tie free, strips off the white Oxford the boys all have to wear, starched and thick and Laurel’s mouth goes dry at the sight of his wife beater, at the sight of shoulders and collarbones and the long, smooth line of his stomach, of muscles that she aches to run her fingers across, and the sparse dusting of hair that she can see peeking out from beneath the beater, and it becomes too much and not enough all at once. 

She bites her tongue and tells herself that she’s seen his cock, she’s seen his eyes clouded with pleasure, that Frank in a wife beater is nothing, nothing at all, tries to slow the pounding of blood in her ears, tries to stop the languid ache that blooms between her legs and the impulse she can’t control to unbutton a few more of the ones that run across her own chest, see if she can achieve the same reaction in Frank. 

She does of course, much to her delight, finds Frank glancing up expectantly after asking her some kind of question about the proper demarcation between tu and usted and why the hell can’t he just get it, instinctively, the way Laurel seems to, except suddenly he trails off with something strangled, something desperate in the sound of all sound ceasing. Laurel looks up, too much to hope for and sees the black of his pupils threatening to drown out everything blue, sees his throat bob helplessly as his eyes track her throat, the expanse of her chest now bared to him, sees the way his fingers curl towards her, seeking, before he balls them into tight, angry fists at his side.

They're playing with a fire that’s burning too hot, too fast for either of them to control, playing chicken with their brakes cut, hurtling towards a crash that Laurel isn’t sure anymore will hurt any worse than she’s already hurting, that might even come as sweet release. So instead of letting her cheeks color instead of glancing away from the power, the hunger in Frank’s gaze, she just lets herself grin cheekily, slip another button through its eyelet, bear just a few soft millimeters of skin to Frank’s eyes.

He coughs, harshly, and its Frank’s cheeks that blush, not hers, his eyes that skitter away first, slink off to stare at the textbook open in his lap and Laurel lets herself claim victory, lets herself steal a little power back for her own, lets the thrill of it burn across her skin like wildfire until she can’t tell what’s wanting for Frank and what’s wanting more control.

And if she spends most of her time trying to memorize the contours of his skin, trying to map a new and foreign land she hopes to one day colonize and make her own, well, she thinks she can be excused, at least a little.

And then the light fades, deepens and darkens and they press close and closer, trying to make out the typing, trying to hear each other over the churning sounds of the boat engines in the harbor, trying to keep their distance even as they’re pulled ever closer by forces that feel almost like the tide, gentle and tugging at their skin.

Studying with Frank is easy, easier than Laurel would have expected. She’d assumed he would try to distract her, try to move away from studying to talk about the boat, about Laurel, about anything other than his homework. She half expects to feel his fingers tripping along her arm, curling against her knee, half expects his breath hot and urgent against her neck. But she finds him perhaps more focused than she is, finding herself biting her tongue to keep from asking Frank questions, keep from mentioning the osprey that circles them, hungry and searching, from pointing out the yacht that moves languidly through the harbor an hour into their studying. And her fingers, itching with the desire to press against the pulse point on his wrist, lips nearly trembling with the effort it takes not to glide along his rough cheek.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the Mountain Goats song "Rain in Soho" which is basically a song about being sixteen and feeling angry and lost and trying/failing to carve out a place where you're not.


End file.
